Knicks can't complete comeback as Mikal Bridges' struggles continue | NY Got Game

Welcome back to another edition of New York Got Game. Dexter Henry here at Madison Square Garden with... An Arsenal fan who I tolerate sometimes, my guy Jared Schwartz, the fantastic sports reporter for us here at the New York Post, also covering the Knicks. Jared and I coming to you after the Knicks lost 115-107 to the Cavaliers here at the Garden. That ends their four-game winning streak. This was a game in which the Knicks didn't play their best defense in the first quarter, found themselves down double digits, battled back and tied this a couple of times, almost looked like game one of the Eastern Conference Finals, but they eventually lost. What went wrong for the Knickerbockers tonight? You know I wrote in my game story, Dexter, that It felt like it was going the same way that we've seen so many times with this matchup. The Cavs were winning for a while. A cat cut the deficit to seven points. Cavs call a timeout. Coming out of the timeout, the Knicks, I think, go on a 7-2 run. Sorry, 9-2 run. Tie the game. Cavs call another timeout. It's like, here we go again. The Cavs are wilting. The Knicks are rising in crunch time. When the game's on the line, the Knicks are making the plays. The Cavs aren't. And then after that, James Harden flipped the script. James Harden hit two shots. He had a jumper to put the Cavs up by two. He later hit a three-pointer to put the Cavs up again. Again, and... At a rare time, we see that the Knicks come up short in crunch time, and what was interesting was Jalen Brunson sat on the bench for most of the fourth quarter. He came back in with 4 minutes and 20 seconds left, but when he came back in, Cat went out, and they never were able to get that final push, that final jump, and some of it is maybe Mike Brown just experimenting a little bit, and we've seen him take these early regular season games to experiment, and I think you saw that again today, and look, James Harden made plays at the end, the Knicks didn't. That's what it came down to and Mike Brown talked about after the game. Before I get to that, I'm curious, what do you think of the experimentation that we saw from Mike Brown, particularly in that situation in the fourth quarter? I wrote about it the other day that this is Mike Brown's MO, right? This is a core staple to who he is as a coach, that he looks at the regular season as sort of a canvas to experiment. Not maybe what his predecessor Tom Thibodeau did, where it was... I'm going to do everything I can to win every night. No, Mike Brown is doing what he can to win in different ways. Jalen Brunson said that the other day. We don't just want to win right now. We want to see how we can win in different ways. And we want to see what can help us down the road. And we want to have examples that we can go to later in the season in the playoffs. And I think Mike Brown the other day talked about the playoffs as the real season. That's obviously different than what Tom Thibodeau did two years ago. So it obviously worked last year. We saw him take that approach. Coach, we see him. Use different lineups, use different rotations, use different bench players. Tyler Kolick has come in the rotation. Alvarado's been out. Diawara has gone from out of the rotation to in. Clarkson has gone from out to in to out. You know, so we've seen Dalton Knecht have some minutes. We've seen a little bit of everything, only a couple games into the season, and that's the Mike Brown way. And last year it worked, so why can't it work this year? Why can't it work? It's always good to do a little bit of experimentation, but this is what Mike Brown had to say about how his team performed after the 115-107 loss to the Cavaliers. Good game by Cleveland, and I say that because they won the possession game. When you play a good team, one of the things that we kind of track is what I call the possession game, and we lost it in every category. Fourteen more free throw attempts than us, four more offensive rebounds than us, and two less turnovers. And when that happens versus a good team, it's going to be hard to win the game. So I give them a lot of credit. Okay, we've got to talk about Karl-Anthony Towns because in this game he gets another double-double. 21-11 ties the mark for Willis Reed for most double-doubles in Knicks franchise history to start the season. That's been really good, officially. I think everybody's always going to talk about the offense. I've personally been very impressed with his defense. What have you made of his start to the season, particularly when you take all the contract stuff that is surrounding him? What do you make of his start to the season? Well, if you remember before the season, he said if he didn't have a new contract, he wanted a new contract to feel comfortable on the court. He doesn't have a new contract, but he certainly feels comfortable on the court. He sure looks comfortable, yeah. Like you said, he's been awesome on both ends. He's taking less shots, but he's more efficient. He's a vacuum on the glass, and he just vacuums up rebounds. And like you said, he's been tremendous defensively. That's why maybe tonight was an outlier, but the Knicks have been really good defensively to start this season. They've been good on the perimeter, and they've been good, to his credit, in the paint. I think we saw that last year during the playoffs that he really stepped up a level on that end of the floor. I'd agree. And if he wants a new contract, he's certainly making a case and putting his money where his mouth is. Yeah, he is. And we'll see how that all plays out. But he's been tremendous to start this season thus far. Now, what I want to ask, and I think this is going to be a thing that Knicks fans are going to want to talk about right now. Mikel Bridges. We have to talk about Mikel Bridges. Only two points tonight. Only played 17 minutes. Second game in a row that he's played 17 minutes. He's played less than 22 minutes in six games this season. He struggled shooting the ball. Slumps happen. You know that. You've been watching basketball for a long time. Are you concerned? About Mikal Bridges at this point, should Knicks fans be concerned about him and the way he's playing and his confidence level? Not even just 17 minutes tonight, no fourth quarter minutes. He was on the bench the entire fourth quarter. And I saw a stat before the game that was a little mind-boggling. Oh, let me hear this. It was that Pacome Dadié actually has more second-half points this season than Mikel Bridges. No. And that's incredible. Really? It was either a fourth-quarter points or second-half points. I mean, either way. Yes. It's tremendous. I feel like I've been saying since last year that trust Bridges, because he goes through these slumps, these stretches where he looks lost, and then you see time and time again that he comes back, he shows his worth, especially in the playoffs, especially in big moments. But man, it's tough right now. He looks like he's lost his confidence, he's unsure what the ball is, and he's turning the ball over more than he usually does. It's not really just a shooting slump, he looks unsure of himself on offense, and that's obviously concerning. And Mike Brown said after the game that... Right now Shamet and McBride are just playing better and even Clarkson didn't play today but he had been playing before that and those three guys are just playing better than Bridges right now so it's really finding that balance of wanting Bridges to find his rhythm and to re-find his game. But also knowing that right now Shamet, Deuce and at times Clarkson are playing better and it's showing in the minutes and it's and you know because you want it to He was asked about whether he wants to take Bridges out of the starting lineup for Shamet. He said, you know, this early in the season, I'm not going to make a panic move. But Shamet's playing more and more. And he has said in the past that Shamet is as close to a starter as any of the non-starters. And we're going to come back to that. I want people to hear what Mike Brown had to say about that when he was asked that question. Mikell is a starter, and so it's not a question of that. You know, he's... Like a lot of players, they've had their good moments and their not-so-good moments. And, you know, Mikell has a proven track record of playing at a pretty high level and starting this league. So for me to, you know, make a quote-unquote panic decision and change it right now, we're 10 games in or whatever we are. I'm not feeling it. So Jared, you heard what exactly he had to say about that, and you were right. He has said in the past that Shamit is close to a starter as anybody on this team. He's pretty much all set. Everybody on this team is on the bench just fighting for minutes. Do you ever think we get to a point where we make a change? Because at this point, 11 games in, and I agree with you, we've seen Mikal Bridges struggle before. This slump feels a little bit longer. I'm just wondering, does any of this even matter? And does it really just matter? This is a guy who's performing in the playoffs. You've seen him come big in the playoffs. Is this anything to be worried about at all? It matters because... Remember, the Knicks are fighting to stay under the second apron and have decisions to make with Karl-Anthony Towns and what to do with him, with Josh Hart, with Miles McBride. And I know, you know, our Knicks beat writer, Seth Bondy, wrote the other day that, not that he was reporting it, but if you want to find a way to keep everybody and stay under the second apron, you can trade Mikal Bridges and basically recreate him in the aggregate with Shamit and McBride. Now we're a long way from there right now, we're a long way from there but it's something to keep in mind and it's tough not to worry because it's concerning and It's like deja vu over and over again. Two years ago, he struggled in the regular season and came up big in the playoffs. Last year, he struggled in the regular season. And people forget, you know, going back to whether Mike Brown makes the move. He was, we probably got as close as we possibly did when the Knicks were down 2-1 in the first round to the Hawks. And before Bridges came alive and was really good at the end of the playoffs, he was really struggling in that round. First three games of that series, yep. And Miles McBride was playing well. And we were asking Mike over and over and over again, are you going to take... Mikal Bridges out of the lineup and it was getting to a point where he was basically just starting but playing bench minutes and they were basically just starting him to keep his confidence and right now that's what's happening he's starting but he's playing bench minutes. He played two minutes in the third quarter and then he didn't see him again. Yeah and he played less than Schammett and Miles McBride so right now he's not playing starting minutes every night in the box score it's four guys with starting minutes and not Bridges so I don't think it's a move he's gonna make but he's basically operating as a bench player right now. Yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see what goes forward. I think Mikal Bridges eventually gets his confidence back and will be fine, but you know what we always say, it can get late early. All right, next up for the Knicks. They will be traveling to Naptown on Friday, NBA Cup game. They'll play the Pacers. First time they'll see each other this season. We will see if Tyrese Halliburton. We'll play in this one. What are you going to be keeping your eye on to see how the Knicks can bounce back in this one after their four-game winning streak was ended? Well, one thing that we didn't talk too much about was that the Knicks didn't get to the line that much. Only 11 free throws. The Cavs had 25. I think midway through the third quarter, they only had one free throw, which is weird for a team. None for Jalen Brunson. None for Jalen Brunson. Do they make an effort to get to the line, you know, and get to the rim and get fouled and make that a point of emphasis that they maybe didn't have today? You know, that's what I'm paying attention to. Obviously, you know, we just talked a bit about Bridges as something to monitor and what his minutes look like compared to Schammett and Miles McBride. And not even that, Josh Hart looked pretty rusty today coming back after missing three games with the ankle problem. He didn't shoot well. He didn't, you know, make that sort of... He made that all-around impact that he normally makes, and he didn't play as much in the fourth quarter either. He was out for Shamit in that fourth quarter as well, so I'd like to see him get back in the groove. They won six of their last seven games. They're on a second leg of a back-to-back. They lost to a good Cavs team. Obviously nothing to be worried about right now, but they're already 0-1 in the Cup. It's a big cup game. It's a big, it's, it's, it's almost always a must win. It's, it's, you know, for, for a game like this, it's, it's a big game. Yeah, it's a big game. We'll see how they do on Friday in the cup. That is the start of a four game road trip for the Knicks in that town against the Pacers. And they have two games north of the border in Toronto against the Raptors. And they close that out in Minneapolis where Jared will be with the Knicks for the last game of that road trip. But the Knicks fall today, 115 to 107 here at the Garden for the great Jarrius Schwartz. I'm Dexter Henry. We'll catch you next time on New York. And thanks for watching New York God Game. Boom shakalaka.