Mikal Bridges’ rough start has put the Knicks in an uncomfortable spot three games into the season, and the numbers around it are brutal.
On Sunday, Bridges scored six points in 35:02 and finished with the worst plus-minus in the game at minus-23. Through three games, he has 10 points in 89:57 on the floor, shooting 5-of-23 from the field - 21.7% - and 0-of-10 from beyond the arc.
The cold stretch goes even deeper. Bridges has more fouls, seven, than field goals made, five, and he has now gone 14 straight quarters without making a jump shot, a run that dates back to the second quarter of the team’s final preseason game against Toronto on October 15.
That puts him in some stark company. It’s his fewest points in a three-game single-season stretch since December 2019, during his second NBA season. He’s also the first player to log at least 89 minutes through his first three games of a season and score 10 points or fewer since Reggie Evans opened the 2010-11 season with eight points in 94 minutes.
There’s also the bigger question hanging over how he’s been playing. The source of the dip is unclear - he’s either dealing with an injury or simply trying to keep his consecutive games played streak alive, which reached 641 games to begin his career on Sunday.
What’s making this start harder to ignore is how little impact he’s had on either end. In Sunday’s third straight loss, the Knicks posted a 94.6 offensive rating and 127.4 defensive rating in the 74 possessions Bridges played. With him off the floor, they flipped to a 128 offensive rating, 72 defensive rating, and a plus-56 net rating across their other 25 possessions.
Offensively, he has looked invisible. Defensively, the concerns have grown too. His primary matchups against the Magic were Jalen Suggs and Anthony Black, and there was also a sequence after Suggs’ injury in which Franz Wagner beat Bridges on a backdoor cut on an out-of-bounds play while scoring easily in the fourth quarter.
Spencer Pearlman’s early tracking on The Court Lab backed up the eye test. Magic offensive players were 5-of-7 from the field when Bridges was their defender, and 5-of-6 when he was the second closest defender. Suggs finished with four points on eight shots, but Black was excellent, scoring 18 points on 6-of-11 shooting, including 5-of-7 from three, while also adding two steals.
Mike Brown’s rotation choices added another layer to the discussion. Bridges played 35 minutes on Sunday after logging just under 22 minutes in Friday’s loss in Boston, when he went 0-of-8 from the field and didn’t score.
That kind of split has become a theme in the early going. In 183 possessions with Bridges on the floor this season, the Knicks have produced an 89.6 offensive rating, a 115.7 defensive rating and a minus-26.1 net rating. In the 109 possessions with him on the bench, they’ve been much stronger, with a 129.4 offensive rating, a 102.8 defensive rating and a plus-26.6 net rating.
The Knicks gave up five first-round picks to get Bridges, and the source notes that they’ve already won a championship with him as a key part of that title run. But that doesn’t make him untouchable.
He is in the first year of a four-year, $150 million extension, with a $41.5 million player option for the 2029-30 season, and he’s already eligible to be traded despite the deal just kicking in. Bridges has gone through poor stretches before, but this one has been different because of how passive he has looked on both ends.
A move seems unlikely after only three games like this, but the idea of an exit plan is at least on the table. Brown has also shown he’s willing to pull Bridges when needed, and that has paid off before in comeback wins over the Cavs in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals and the Spurs in Game 4 of the Finals.
For now, the Knicks are looking for offense wherever they can find it, and Bridges has not provided it. That’s made the slow start especially loud, even with Landry Shamet and Deuce McBride also struggling to find consistency on offense despite giving the team defensive help.
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