I hope that Miles Bridges did okay in the dunk contest. I didn’t watch it (and I’m going to keep reminding you of that fact until some acknowledges that they’re impressed by my willful shunning of the event), so I don’t know what types of dunks he even did. But he does strike me as more of an in-game dunker than a guy who can get people excited just standing by himself on the court, and I know he didn’t win, so maybe he wasn’t all that good.
Luckily for Charlotte fans, Bridges had his own mini dunk contest in this game against the Bucks. His putback over Giannis was pretty darn sweet, even if the replays showed that he didn’t dunk all over him like it looked like on the initial view. That’s the kind of thing that would make the dunk contest better; having Giannis try to get in the way of all the dunks. Him or Jarrett Allen. You’d have to pay them a lot so they’d be willing to get dunked on a million times, but if Adam Silver is looking for ways to reinvigorate All-Star weekend, that would be a start.
Another thing he could do is not have players like Bridges in the dunk contest in the first place. He’s fine, and he dunks well, but people around the nation can’t get that excited for a random rookie who doesn’t play that much on a team that isn’t that good. It’s a shame LeBron is too much of a coward to do it, but some bigger name players would add a little hype to the proceedings.