NEW YORK — Mikal Bridges entered the NBA in 2018 as a built-in-a-lab 3-and-D wing — 6 foot 6 with a 7-1 wingspan and a knockdown outside shot — but he longed for more than that role.
He wanted to emulate Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, two of the league’s premier two-way players. They, too, began in more limited roles before taking on a central part of their team’s offense.
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By the time he was traded in February, Bridges had already become one of the NBA’s best 3-and-D wings. In Brooklyn, he has become something more. After getting a taste of being “the guy” in Phoenix while Chris Paul and Devin Booker were hurt earlier this season, he enters the postseason as the Nets’ leading scorer.
But Bridges told The Athleticthat had the Suns stayed healthy before he was traded, he still thinks he’d be playing the way he is now. It just might have looked different. Becoming a two-way star with the Suns was still feasible.
“Just slower steps,” Bridges said. “That’s what it is. Things happened where I had to get there fast, but I just kept developing. I was still getting better this year when they were playing. … Sometimes you have to take things faster and grow faster than usual. I always would have grown.”
Since being dealt to the Nets as one of the key players in the Kevin Durant trade, Bridges has seen his offensive game reach new heights. In Phoenix, Bridges was a role player on a team built around Booker and Paul. In 27 games with the Nets, he’s done it all, averaging 26.1 points per game on 48 percent shooting and 38 percent from 3. Maybe the biggest indicator of Bridges’ rise is his 3-point celebration, a three-finger point and head shake in honor of the Padres’ Manny Machado, who Bridges said recently started following him on Instagram after his mimicking of Machado’s celebration went viral. Other NBA stars have since copied Bridges’ celebration.
Too many fingers my boy😭😭 https://t.co/yERztqBBEX
— Mikal Bridges (@mikal_bridges) March 30, 2023
By trading Durant and Kyrie Irving, the Nets closed the door to an era of unavailability and acquired the NBA’s most reliable player. Bridges is the league’s Iron Man for five years running. But no one was expecting him to flirt with Durant’s offensive production.
“I always say I got traded at the right time,” Bridges said.
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The reason? Bridges said he’s always had these aspects to his game. He just hasn’t always had the opportunity or need to show them. Injuries to Booker and Paul changed that calculus and gave him the chance to be Phoenix’s primary scorer. In 48 games without Paul this season, Bridges averaged 22.6 points and 3.8 assists per game.
“I don’t think anybody knew that Mikal was this amazing offensively,” Spencer Dinwiddie said on March 10, after Bridges dropped 34 points in an overtime win at Minnesota. “Just being completely real.”
Those who know Bridges better might disagree. Heck, Nets general manager Sean Marks almost predicted this. After the trade deadline, he said he expected Bridges to “kind of explode here.” Coincidentally, Marks watched Leonard make the same transition from role player to star in San Antonio when he was the Spurs’ assistant general manager.
Timberwolves coach Chris Finch, a former Rockets assistant who overlapped with James Harden in Houston, has compared Bridges’ scoring outburst to Harden’s when he was traded away from the Thunder. Jazz coach Will Hardy took it a step further.
“You have to really wipe away any prior notions you had about him,” Hardy said earlier in April. “Some things still remain the same. You’re worried about him shooting catch-and-shoot 3s; you’re worried about his activity defensively, but you have to understand that he’s going to do things in tonight’s game that I’ve never seen Mikal Bridges do live in a game before because he hasn’t been in that situation.
“So there’s plays that he’s making here in Brooklyn that some would say, ‘That’s a tough shot, that’s a tough play that we haven’t seen him make before.’ But that doesn’t mean he can’t convert on those. So yeah, I do think you do have to really try to wipe away what you thought of him before and just start fresh because there is something to be said about a new situation, new context, and obviously Mikal’s making the most of it.”
At Villanova, when driving to the basket, Bridges either had to jump stop or dunk the ball, Jay Wright said, which limited his options to finish. Wright was adamant about the fundamentals and not interested in flash. He said his players could work on that afterward.
“The creativity of finishing right-hand, left-hand runners, floaters — all of that he has done on his own,” Wright said. “And that’s purely his own luck, his own creativity.”
Praise aside, Bridges still lives in fear of Wright. It’s been five years since he starred at Villanova but the former Wildcats player said he’s thought of what his college coach would think of some of his recent play, mainly his passing. He’s left the ground regularly to find an open teammate.
“That’s a sin in the program,” Bridges said.
Wright’s philosophy was jumping to make a pass meant the pass was more likely to result in a turnover, hence the jump stop. Of all the things Bridges has done since being traded, the 26-year-old believes his playmaking is the biggest change he’s seen with himself recently. While talking about his passes, Bridges sounded as if Wright was listening in behind him, knowing his coach’s feelings on the approach he’s taken.
“If he hears this and reads this, he 100 percent knows that’s definitely the biggest thing he would not like and I know he still doesn’t like,” Bridges said.
Cam Johnson knows exactly what his close friend and longtime teammate is referring to. In the Nets’ blowout win in Miami on March 25, Bridges found Johnson on the weakside corner for a 3 by jumping and making a right-handed crosscourt pass to get him the ball.
“He’s had a few of those,” Johnson admitted.
Bridges said another habit he’s altered is his slashing. He’s always been good at it, but in college, and at times in Phoenix, he would pump-fake before driving to the basket, another Wright philosophy. In Brooklyn, he’s taken off upon receiving the ball, which is termed “stampede” in Jacque Vaughn’s playbook.
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While he’s in Philly for the playoffs, Bridges might owe a thank you to his hometown team, who infamously traded him on draft night after selecting him 10th. At the time, his mother worked for the organization, and he grew up a “huge Sixers fan,” watching Allen Iverson, Andre Iguodala and a young Jrue Holiday. Those feelings went away quickly after the trade. It’s part of why the trade for Durant didn’t faze him. His first minutes in the league prepared him for it.
After Bridges’ recent strong stretch, scouts and executives around the league are cautiously optimistic he can sustain his first two months of offensive output with the Nets. But it’s only been a third of the season.
“He was a late bloomer,” said one Eastern Conference scout, who was granted anonymity so they could speak freely. “He could do a bit of everything but was always so limited by his strength. Ultimately, I think strength is his biggest limitation as well as his experience as a primary ballhandler. But he’s capable.”
Another evaluator, who was granted anonymity so they could speak freely, said Bridges’ familiarity as the go-to scorer will come faster as his usage rate increases. The draft picks the Nets acquired from Phoenix and Dallas, the latter of which was for Irving, give them the fourth-most draft assets in the league, allowing them to search for another big piece soon. The Nets also have a wing-heavy roster and inevitably some gymnastics will be done this summer to change that.
“He needs to be playing like this for the next year,” said an executive, who was granted anonymity because their team did not give him permission to discuss other team’s players, of the skepticism around Bridges. “I’m not sure he’s going to be able to do that because I do not know what the team is going to look like next year. … Right now I think he is at best a very, very good, high-level third-best player and OK second-best player, but for a winning team, he’s not ready there yet.
“If you put him next to two bona fide superstars, he can be incredible.”
Regardless of what evaluators think, the Nets don’t plan to stop giving Bridges opportunities to prove himself as a leading player. He led the league in games played (83) and minutes (2,963) this season and Vaughn said he plans to give Bridges more playmaking responsibilities and envisions him being the primary scorer and facilitator at times going forward.
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“(A) lot more room on the plate,” Vaughn said. “Big plate. Just overall his ability to handle the basketball I think that’s the next thing for him. In a lineup could he be out there and handle it by himself with just other wing players around him? His ability to play pick and roll even more and be a distributor for us because he’s just going to gain so much attention now these days. Can he be a decoy at times? And learning when to be a decoy and how to use that for the benefit of his teammates.”
No one is expecting the Nets to beat the Sixers in their first-round playoff series, which starts Saturday in Philadelphia.
But Dinwiddie said it also could be the kind of series that silences any remaining doubts that Bridges’ recent outburst isn’t sustainable.
“Reputations are typically made in the playoffs right?” he said Sunday. “So you know if Mikal keeps playing at the level he is, he’ll be considered a star at the end of this thing, especially if we can advance or do anything special. I think we have a guy who has the ability to play at that level.”
(Photo of Mikal Bridges: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)
