Why Knicks’ Mikal Bridges Can Be All-Star

The New York Knicks traded five first-round picks for Mikal Bridges, which is a lot for someone who has yet to make an All-Star team in his career.

Bridges, who just turned 28 on Friday, was acquired by the Knicks in a blockbuster trade with the Brooklyn Nets just before the 2024 NBA Draft back in June. Since then, he’s trained with some of his old Villanova (and now current) teammates to try and get better ahead of the upcoming season.

If everything goes right for Bridges, Bleacher Report writer Zach Buckley believes Bridges can make his first All-Star team.

“Bridges paces the league in minutes, ramps up his shooting rates and earns his first ever All-Star invitation,” Buckley writes. “Bridges’ defense and reliability should make him an instant favorite of coach Tom Thibodeau, which could send Bridges’ minutes average skyrocketing. If he performs like the missing piece the Knicks placed a massive bet on him becoming, he might prove impossible to take off the floor. If he fits as well as New York thinks he can, he could raise the defense to an elite level while choosing his offensive spots and making a serious push for a 50/40/90 shooting slash. The Knicks could be good enough that it’s obvious they need multiple All-Stars, and a defensively dominant, offensively efficient Bridges can get the nod.”

Bridges averaged 19.6 points per game as the Nets’ top offensive weapon last season. He won’t have that same luxury with the Knicks this year as Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle should share the floor with him most of the time. Bridges’ role on the Knicks is to complement those two as much as possible before providing his own offense.

Tertiary options for teams have been All-Stars before, but Bridges will have to be that type of player at an elite level if he wants to make the All-Star team this year.

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