Your eyes do not deceive you. Mikal Bridges' isn’t just having the worst offensive stretch of his New York Knicks tenure.
Through the team’s first 11 games, this is by some measures the worst offensive stretch of Bridges’ entire career.
And even if it’s not the absolute worst, it is certainly the most troubling.
Mikal Bridges has never been more inefficient
Bridges has opened the season shooting 37.8 percent on twos(!) and 26.5 percent from beyond the arc. Both of these are by far and away career lows. He is also taking just 0.05 free throws for every field goal he attempts—another career low.
The optimistic refrain is to trust Bridges’ performance will even out over time. He has battled protracted slumps before. Jalen Brunson and the rest of the team clearly have his back. The Knicks remain deep enough to reorient the rotation until he climbs out of this rut.
At the same time, even when accounting for the truncated stretch, Bridges has never been this inefficient.
The NBA’s resident ironman has now made 725 career appearances across the regular season and playoffs, giving us 715 possible 11-game stretches. His effective field-goal percentage—a combined measure of two-point and three-point efficiency—to open the year sits at 38.6 percent. That is the lowest mark of any 11-game stretch in his entire career.
Not only that, but Bridges’ newest nadir isn’t even close to its predecessor. His previously worst 11-game stretch started on November 21, 2018 and ran through December 18. Bridges’ effective field-goal percentage during that time was 41.7.
As the above graphic shows, the 30-year-old’s two-point percentage is dragging him down. A 37.8 percent clip inside the arc ranks 707th out of a possible 715 combinations.
Bridges’ lack of free-throw volume is just as troubling. He has never been a high-volume contact-drawer, but he has just four attempts from the charity stripe in 11 games. And they all came during New York’s win over the Brooklyn Nets. His 0.05 free-throw-attempt rate ranks 704th out of a possible 715 career stretches..
The Knicks have no choice but to ride this out
None of this should result in the Knicks immediately putting their embattled wing on the trade block. Other teams have eyes, so they’d be moving him at his absolute lowest point. He also remains too important to their defensive ceiling, particularly in a postseason setting.
Player data also doesn’t stabilize after 11 games. Bridges’ has a career resume that suggests he won’t remain one of the league’s worst offensive players for an entire season.
Still, his current struggles also just can’t be dismissed. This is not your average Mikal Bridges slump. It is something more: his most unsettling ever. And while that doesn’t mean it’s permanent, nobody can sit here and pretend they know, unequivocally, what happens next.
Because no one—not me, not you, not the Knicks, not Bridges himself—has ever seen this before.
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