Mikal Bridges took eight shots on Friday night. None of them went in.
The Knicks forward went 0-of-8 from the field and 0-of-5 from 3-point range in a 107-103 loss to the Celtics at TD Garden, finishing with no points, four assists and one rebound in just under 22 minutes of action on Friday.
The Knicks were outscored by 12 with him on the floor.
“I mean, he had three or four wide-open threes, and obviously we want him to make half of them if they’re open,” head coach Mike Brown said after the loss, New York’s second in a row to begin their campaign as reigning NBA champions. “But he’s got to keep shooting and hopefully they’ll eventually go in sooner than later.”
Brown was not concerned with the shot selection in Boston on Friday. Bridges also shot two-of-eight from the field and missed both of his attempts from behind the arc in the season-opening loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Through the first two games of the season, he is 2-of-16 from the field and zero-of-seven from downtown. Bridges also shot two-of-eight from downtown and 11-of-26 in the preseason, though he shot 9-of-15 from the field (and two-of-six from deep) over his final two exhibition games.
“He’s getting the looks that he needs to get. He’s just got to knock them down now,” Brown said. “And then he’s got to make sure that he’s physical on the defensive end.”
The Knicks acquired Bridges from the Nets in the July 2024 deal that sent Bojan Bogdanovic, Shake Milton, Mamadi Diakite, four unprotected first-round picks (2025, 2027, 2029 and 2031), Milwaukee’s top-four-protected 2025 first-rounder, a 2028 first-round pick swap and a 2025 second-round pick to Brooklyn. In August of 2025, the Knicks signed Bridges to a four-year, $150 million extension that includes a player option for 2029-30 and a trade kicker.
This season is the first year of the new deal, and his slow start follows an uneven 2025-2026 regular season.
Bridges started all 82 games in 2025-26 and averaged 14.4 points on 49% shooting and 37.1% from 3, but the season split. Before the All-Star break, he averaged 15.9 points on 50.4% shooting in 55 games. After it, he averaged 11.3 points on 45.4% shooting and 33.3% from 3 in 27 games, including a month of March where he averaged 10.8 points on 43% shooting from the field and a stretch of 16-of-54 shooting from the field and 6-of-28 shooting from deep over a six-game stretch.
Bridges, of course, found it again when it mattered, shooting 55.9% from the field in 19 playoff games as the Knicks won their first championship in 53 years.
The new season has started like March, but Brown said in the preseason he intentionally held the team back offensively so they could work on playing out of their concepts without play calls. It is unclear how much of the offense Brown is withholding as the Knicks work through the kinks of their offense early into the season.
“I’m still trying to figure out this team a little bit,” he said ahead of tipoff on Friday. “New season, new team, new challenges, and so I’m not even sure who I wanna play yet, you know? Trying to figure the little things out.”
On Friday in Boston, Bridges took two shots in every quarter, and his first two were 3s in the first 1 minute and 22 seconds of the game. He kept finding teammates, with assists on Karl-Anthony Towns’ 3 for the Knicks’ first basket, two OG Anunoby baskets and a Miles McBride jumper.
The Knicks host the Orlando Magic on Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Garden.