SAN ANTONIO — The final frontier awaits. What the Knicks have dreamt of since childhood, what they’ve chased as men.
On a team that won the Eastern Conference for the first time in 27 years and is seeking its first title in 53 years, OG Anunoby is the only player with a ring, but he has never played a minute in the NBA Finals. Jordan Clarkson made the trip with the 2018 Cavaliers, but barely saw the floor in Cleveland’s four-game sweep against Golden State.
Only Mikal Bridges has seen significant action on this stage, starting for the Suns in the 2021 NBA Finals.
Phoenix entered that series against Milwaukee as the favorite and won the first two games by double digits, leaving the level-headed swingman uncharacteristically overconfident that he would be adding another ring to his collection from Villanova.
“I remember going up 2-0 [and] I thought we was good,” Bridges told teammates Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart on the “Roommates Show” in 2024. “We ’bout to win the chip, especially in the West, especially then, the West all had tough teams. East, we were like, whatever … We go see Milwaukee, we’re over here like, ‘Pfft.’ I’m like, ‘It’s light. It’s the East. It’s Milwaukee. I know they got Giannis [Antetokounmpo] and obviously they got hoopers, but the West is tougher than the East.’ We’re like, ‘We good.’ Go up 2-0, we’re looking like, ‘Exactly. This is what we’ve been talking about. It’s the East, bruh. We’re about to win this.’ And then they went on to win four straight. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Bridges was a big reason the Suns were in position to win their first NBA title, scoring 27 points in Game 2 to put his team in control. But the former Villanova star disappeared in the final four games, averaging just over four shots per game despite hitting 53 percent from the field and nearly 43 percent on 3-pointers in the series.
Five years later, Bridges, 29, has put his fingerprints all over the Knicks’ dominant postseason run. Since being benched during a scoreless performance in Game 3 of the first-round series against Atlanta, he has demonstrated newfound aggressiveness, averaging 18.7 points (shooting over 62 percent from the field) while shutting down multiple All-Star guards on the other end of the floor.
Bridges has helped the Knicks build one of the longest postseason winning streaks of all time (11), along with the largest point differential (+19.4 per game) of any team ever to reach the NBA Finals.
But a title will never be taken for granted again.
“[There are] a lot of questions, a lot of talk about how great we are, how great we’ve been,” Bridges recently said. “It doesn’t matter. We just got to worry about being ourselves and stay locked in.
“It’s great to get there, but that’s not our main goal.”
