Mikal Bridges has not had the smoothest season so far for the Brooklyn Nets, but he has had plenty of starts to games that had the makings of a 30-point outing. However, like most of the Nets, Bridges seems to start the game well before the shooting tails off in the second half for some reason.
In Sunday’s 124-108 loss at the Oklahoma City Thunder, Bridges had 22 points (8-of-20 from the field, 3-of-10 from three-point land), seven rebounds, and seven assists in a game that looks good in the box score, but did not seem that way in real time. In the first quarter, Bridges had 15 points (6-of-8 from the field, 3-of-3 from deep, three assists), but after that, he put up just seven points in a contest where Brooklyn struggled to score for important stretches of time.
The poor offensive showing by the Nets is not just about Bridges as the rest of the team did not play well by shooting 38% from the field and 26.1% from behind the three-point line. With the way that the Thunder was scoring the ball at will in the half-court and in transition, the only choice Brooklyn had was to try to out-score Oklahoma City because of how much they have struggled on the defensive end.
After the deflating loss, Bridges spoke about why the offense played so poorly despite coming into the game as one of the better offenses in the NBA. According to Evan Barnes of Newsday, Bridges said that the Nets got the looks they wanted, but just couldn’t get those shots to fall.
More of what he said in Barnes’ tweet below:
Mikal Bridges: “We got the looks we wanted. Just couldn’t make them. We got the looks, we wanted. We just got to get stops on the other end as well. They just shot 54% from the field so just gotta be better.”
Key for this upcoming back to back: “Get stops, just get stops”
— Evan Barnes (@evan_b) January 1, 2024
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