Before Wednesday night’s game in Portland, the talk around the Knicks was all about Mikal Bridges and the minutes head coach Tom Thibodeau asked his starters to log each night.
The talk after the game was again all about Bridges. But even on a night when the wing logged 41 minutes – and the other four New York starters played at least 38 – the minutes narrative was shoved to the back burner in place of how the starters made their time on the court count.
The Knicks needed every moment of the game’s 53 minutes to separate themselves from a pesky Trail Blazers team that battled back from deficits in a seesaw game that had 14 ties and 42 lead changes, and ended when Bridges connected on a 25-foot three-pointer just before the buzzer for a 114-113 overtime win.
Forty-one minutes tonight, are you feeling OK, Bridges was asked after the win. "I feel great," he answered.
On the final play with 3.1 seconds left and New York down by one, Bridges triggered the in-bound to Josh Hart and executed a simple hand-off, pick-play to find space at the top of the key and launch a three that just got past the outstretched fingers of the Blazers' 7-foot-2 big man Donovan Clingan.
The shot silenced the Portland crowd and the home team’s television announcers.