Knicks' Mikal Bridges has mastered adversity: Video games, bullying and friendship

New York Times

08-05-2025

BOSTON — Mikal Bridges finds solace in front of a television screen: a game controller gripped by his gangly fingers, a headset sitting on his waves and his best friend in the NBA in his ear.
For months, Bridges and Knicks teammate Cam Payne had been playing the recently resurrected College Football 25. Lately, though, Bridges has been playing MLB The Show. He's a big-time baseball fan. Bridges' patented 3-point celebration — three fingers extended, a head bobble and his tongue out — rips off the San Diego Padres, who used to point at the dugout and do a head turn when they got an extra-base hit.
This is how Bridges escapes the wild world he was thrust into last summer.
'We're probably going to play the game tonight,' Payne, who signed a one-year deal last summer, joining his old Phoenix Suns teammate and friend, told The Athletic . 'He does the same for me. When I first came to the team, when I signed, I told him I need him to keep me grounded, with however the situation is going to go. He said, 'I need the same thing.''
Just a bridge — no pun intended — separates the subdued and uneventful place he previously called home and the pressurized and suffocating place where he now resides. Bridges was traded from the Brooklyn Nets to the New York Knicks for five first-round picks, a haul that gets brought up every time he opens social media after a bad game. Bridges entered a Knicks organization at the same time expectations skyrocketed. His arrival boosted the excitement. It feels like everything Bridges does is under a microscope because of what he was traded for, as if he determined his own value.
Bridges, though, throughout an up-and-down season, has mastered adversity at every turn. The latest example came Wednesday night in Boston, when he scored 14 points in the fourth quarter, after laying a goose egg in the game's previous 36 minutes, to help New York overcome another 20-point deficit and win 91-90 to take a 2-o lead over the defending NBA champions. He had the game-clinching steal when the Celtics had a chance to win on the final possession. In Game 1, Bridges' 3 late in an overtime win propelled New York forward. He made just 2 of 12 shots before then. Bridges followed that make with a flying steal in front of his bench, then ripped the ball out of Jaylen Brown's arms to end the game.
BRIDGES BARRAGE IN THE 4TH 😤 pic.twitter.com/uFrNG9ehlC
— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) May 8, 2025
No one is thinking about those draft picks now. The Knicks have the Celtics on the ropes. Bridges is largely why, and so is Payne, who is the former's personal hype man. These two are Chuck D and Flava Flav in a Knicks uniform. Payne cusses out Bridges when he's not playing well. He did it again going into the fourth quarter.
'I can't tell ya'll what I said,' Payne said, laughing. 'After the season.'
When most scrutinized this season, Bridges has overcome the peripheral noise. For the first few months, all basketball fans outside of New York heard was that the guy New York had traded five firsts for was struggling and the Knicks might have set themselves back. Then, on Christmas Day, the unofficial start of the NBA season, Bridges scored 41 points in a win over the Spurs with the whole world watching. It was as if fake news had littered everyone's feeds through October and November.
'Get your damn apology forms out,' Knicks teammate Josh Hart said after Bridges' performance on Christmas. 'I'll be collecting them next game.'
In March, with the Knicks on the road in Portland, a weird situation took place between Bridges and head coach Tom Thibodeau. During the shoot-around before the game, Bridges was asked about the starters' high minutes. With his answer, Bridges became the first player under Thibodeau to publicly suggest it might be too much and said he and his coach discussed the latter's reliance on the starting group. Later that day, Thibodeau refuted the claim that he and Bridges had discussed the topic. The two had a closed-door meeting before the game. It made for an awkward day that had Knicks faithful locked into the first drama-filled moment of the season. Bridges responded with a game-high 33 points and a buzzer-beating 3 in overtime as time expired.
When you ask the people who know Bridges best, his ability to overcome adverse situations isn't surprising. If you haven't heard, Jalen Brunson and Hart were also teammates with Bridges in college at Villanova, where they were national champions. The program under head coach Jay Wright was as much of a challenge in mental toughness as it was in physicality. Players were pushed to their limits. Many young players had to prove they belonged before they could even touch the floor.
'Going back to our days in college, the way we practiced and prepared for games, it was more mental than anything,' Brunson said. 'Then, when you get to the game situations, you've practiced it and been prepared for it. When you do that at a young age and have that in your repertoire going into a professional career, you have that in your back pocket.
'He has the ability to block out the noise.'
Bridges started his college career at Villanova as a redshirt and on the scout team. Hart was an elder statesman and hated practicing in college. He still does in the NBA. To get the most out of Hart during those sessions, members of the Wildcats coaching staff would have to say things to trigger him. Bridges, who was often matched up with Hart in practice, was often the target of his anger and frustration with the mind games the coaches played.
'He was a bully when I first got to campus,' Bridges, the younger of the two by almost 18 months, said. 'I had nothing wrong with him. He didn't like me at the beginning. There might have been a little fear of a 6-foot-6 lanky kid who was looking pretty solid. I think he had a little fear factor.'
Hart's bullying, though, got the best out of Bridges.
'Josh used to terrorize Mikal early on,' Villanova assistant coach Ashley Howard told The Athletic . 'Mikal wasn't physically where he eventually got, and Josh is Josh. The Josh Hart you guys see now, he was that from Day 1. He was fierce, tough, nasty and a competitor. Lo and behold, what ends up happening is that you get a Mikal Bridges who is a young freshman and was committed the whole year to improving his body, doing skill work and watching film. His game day was practice. His game day was against Josh Hart, this dude who we all knew was the toughest and nastiest on the floor. He made Mikal better.'
Bridges hasn't been perfect as a Knick. Yet, the move still feels justified, especially now. New York is two wins away from its first Eastern Conference Finals in 25 years. Winning is what's most important, and Bridges keeps finding ways to contribute to that in the sport's tensest situations.
The hate toward Bridges has often been loud. The praise deserves to be even louder — so he can hear it through his headset.
(Photo of Mikal Bridges and Jayson Tatum: David Butler II / Imagn Images)