Knicks bench Mikal Bridges in Game 3 loss to Hawks: 'We have to look at everything'
At least Mikal Bridges gets a few days out of New York. In a 109-108 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in Game 3 of their first-round playoff series, the Knicks wing posted a stat line — a 0-1-2 (or zero points, one rebound and two assists) with four turnovers — that will live in infamy if his team cannot come back from a 2-1 deficit in the best-of-seven set. Heck, they might name a 0-1-2 after him.
It’s hard for Bridges to make so little impact in 20 minutes of a high-stakes playoff game, if only because we know how talented he is. He averaged 14. 4 points (on 49/37/83 shooting splits), 3.
8 rebounds and 3. 7 assists (against just one turnover) per game in the regular season. Through the first two games of this series, a 1-1 split in Madison Square Garden, his scoring average was down to 10.
5 points (on 42/30/100). But things went from worse to abominable on Thursday, when he missed all three of his shot attempts — a pair of corner 3-pointers and a wide-open 12-foot turnaround. He did not attempt a shot after the five-minute mark of the second quarter.
Worse: He somehow finished -26 over 20 minutes of a game the Knicks lost by a single point. To be fair, he only played five minutes of the second half. He sat on the bench for the final 9:48 of the third quarter, returned for the start of the fourth, only to be benched again at the 9:25 mark of the final frame.