Mikal Bridges has played in the Garden as a collegian at Villanova, as a visiting player in the NBA and in the preseason wearing a Knicks uniform.
But after an otherwise forgettable debut for their new team Tuesday night in Boston, Bridges and fellow newcomer Karl-Anthony Towns will play their first regular-season game at MSG on Friday night against the Pacers, who eliminated the Knicks in the playoffs last spring.
“Excited, man, really excited,” Bridges said after Thursday’s practice in Tarrytown. “I mean, I felt the energy in the preseason games. So just excited to go out there and get an opportunity to go get a win. It’s gonna be real fun.”
Tuesday’s opener in Beantown wasn’t fun for anyone associated with the Knicks as the Celtics raised their latest championship banner before blowing out the visitors while tying an NBA record with 29 made 3-pointers.
Towns had a quiet 12 points and seven rebounds, and Bridges finished with 16 after being held scoreless in the first half. He also admittedly had a poor game defensively while primarily guarding Jayson Tatum, who buried eight treys and finished with 37 points.
“I think all of us were just not putting enough pressure on the ball, and I think they just felt too comfortable,” Bridges said. “So I think it starts with being aggressive on ball, putting pressure, coming off ball screens from there, and then flying around and being on their toes, being right there when they’re about to shoot.”
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau noted that OG Anunoby also spent time guarding Tatum, but after dissecting the game film, he described the blowout as “a compilation of things from A to Z defensively: how we guarded the ball, our body position, challenging shots, giving up second shots. So we’ve gotta clean that up.”
Bridges, who missed 17 of 19 from 3-point range in the preseason, was encouraged that he shot 2 of 3 from long distance in the second half against the Celtics and made seven of his final eight shot attempts overall.
With two new starters and several new rotation pieces due to trades and injuries, the Knicks are attempting to build chemistry on the fly.
Still, as All-Star point guard Jalen Brunson pointed out after the Boston massacre, the lack of familiarity is “no excuse” for the Knicks getting their “ass kicked.”
“I think we’re just trying to find our identity, find it as a team and our culture as a team,” said Bridges, who was acquired from the Nets. “So it’s just all being together, trying to find our culture and what team we wanna be.”
Named the team’s captain in the offseason, Brunson typically put the onus on himself to integrate Bridges — his former Villanova teammate — and Towns more seamlessly.
“Just as a team, we did not show up. And that, it starts with me,” Brunson said Thursday. “Practice harder, be better at it. [It’s] reps and honestly just being better. It’s as simple as that. You can talk about X’s and O’s. But you’ve just got to start the game [better]. We didn’t show up.
“We have to [build chemistry]. We have no other choice if we want to be a good team.”
Thibodeau called coming together “the challenge with any team,” but it hasn’t been easy after the Knicks overhauled last year’s 50-win squad with the departures of Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo in the Towns trade with Minnesota and Isaiah Hartenstein via free agency. Big men Mitchell Robinson and Precious Achiuwa also are injured to start the season.
“That’s why you put everything you have into each and every day and you strive for improvement,” Thibodeau said. “The games reveal exactly where you are, it tells you the things you need to work on, and even if it’s going well, if you have slippage, you’re gonna have to sort it out.
“So it’s constant throughout the course of a season, and that’s why you go in wanting to understand why you won or why you lost, make the necessary corrections and move on.”