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The Knicks acquired Mikal Bridges to be the 3-and-D they’ve been missing but his three-point shooting in the early going of the 2024-25 season has drawn concern from pundits and internet sleuths alike.
And his performance in the Knicks’ regular-season opener against the Boston Celtics on Tuesday didn’t necessarily put those concerns to rest.
In the first half, Bridges went scoreless, shooting 0-for-5, including 0-for-4 from beyond the arc.
This came after Bridges had a rough preseason, where he went 2-for-19 from three in four preseason games including going 0-for-10 in the preseason finale against the Wizards. That led many to dissect his shot and some saying they found a change in his shooting form.
Bridges himself admitted to developing a hitch out of college and told the NY Post before the start of the regular season that he’s been trying to “fix it back to when I was in college.”
So naturally, the topic of Bridges’ shot was brought up after the Knicks’ loss on Tuesday and Josh Hart defended his teammate.
“Mikal don’t care about anything else. We don’t care about all the background noise on Mikal, his shot. We don’t care about it,” Hart said. “He puts the work in every day, he’s going to be good. The talk around it is stupid. There’s stupidity to it. At the end of the day, he’s been almost a 40 percent career three-point shooter. Talk around it is stupid and we’re not going to entertain it.”
Hart is right. Entering this season, Bridges is a 38 percent three-point shooter, and while Tuesday’s game didn’t start off the way he would have liked, the second half was much better for the first-year Knick.
The small forward went 7-for-8 including 2-for-3 from three in quarters three and four. Bridges finished with 16 points on 7-of-13 shooting (2-of-7 from deep) to go along with two assists.
“Just making one, that’s pretty much it. Just Making one is like letting the lid off,” Bridges said of how he turned it on offensively in the second half. “Teammates keep finding me. Just stay aggressive and that’s pretty much it.”
Recent shooting struggles aside, Bridges has a proven track record of shooting the ball well and it was encouraging to see him find the bottom of the basket in the second half of Tuesday’s game.
Bridges and the Knicks will look to learn from and build on their loss to the Celtics when they host the Indiana Pacers on Friday night.