There were a lot of eye-opening moments in the Knicks’ 126-101 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday night at Madison Square Garden, but Mikal Bridges’ shooting woes may be at the top.
Bridges’ inconsistent first season with the Knicks continued but may have hit a new low. The guard scored zero points on 0-of-9 shooting, including 0-for-7 from three. This comes a game after he scored just 10 points — on 4-of-18 shooting — in Wednesday’s win against the lowly Toronto Raptors.
Asked after Friday’s loss if he felt there was anything going on with his shot, Bridges was honest with his assessment.
“I gotta make [shots],” Bridges said. “I’ve been short on a lot of them probably these past couple of games, so I just gotta put a little more lift on it… just put more legs in it.”
Bridges started the calendar year shooting well. In his three games prior to Toronto, he scored 24, 18, and 24 and shot nearly 50 percent from the field in all three. That hot shooting was a carryover from December when he averaged 21.5 points on 56 percent shooting, including 43 percent from three.
The Villanova product says his shooting arc and form are good, but he has to be mindful of putting a bit more into his shot because the lack of power is causing him to hit the front of the rim a lot lately.
But poor shooting wasn’t just a Bridges problem on Friday. The team collectively shot 39 percent and 13 percent from three.
And although teams are going to go cold offensively throughout a long 82-game season, Tom Thibodeau‘s teams of the past were able to lean on their defense to keep games close and even win some. That didn’t happen against OKC who had their way on the offensive end, shooting 54 percent and 52 percent from three.
Bridges believes this team sometimes loses their defensive intensity when shots aren’t going down.
“We have that throughout the season sometimes not scoring kind of messes up our energy,” he said. “We can’t be that team. We can’t be a team where you make shots and everything is going good.”
The Knicks won’t have much time to think about Friday’s loss as they’ll welcome Milwaukee on Sunday afternoon.
Hopefully, the team will give the MSG faithful something to cheer about because, for the first time all season, they booed their Knicks. And they booed Bridges consistently with each missed shot.
“I get it. Missing shots that’s something you can’t control. Just gotta keep getting them up,” he said. “Defensively a lot of miscues, a lack of communication, which is very boo-worthy. I’m not tripping. Just got to be better.”
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