By: Brendon Kleen
With the score tied at 21 in San Francisco and a couple minutes left in the second half, the crowd was looking the wrong direction. A big Juan Toscano-Anderson dunk got Warriors' fans attention, but the Suns' focus was at midcourt, where Mikal Bridges was lying after diving for a loose ball. When he popped up, the look on his face was as if he was about to be sick, and for good reason.
Bridges suffered a dislocated pinkie on the play and headed straight to the locker room. The Suns had to press on without him, a truly unfamiliar concept. While Bridges returned just before halftime, the scare he gave his teammates and coaches reverberated through the night.
“For him to come back and basically play with one hand, it says a lot about who we are as a ballclub,” said head coach Monty Williams. “I'm just grateful it wasn't worse.”
This Suns team truly doesn't know what it's like to be without Bridges, who has never missed an NBA game. But his impact goes much deeper than availability: On a team full of hard workers and ballers who sacrifice in the name of winning, Bridges stands out. And after a breakout 2020-21 campaign, Bridges' value has been affirmed with a fresh new extension, but the way he gets it done can sometimes go overlooked.
The question racing through heads on the Suns' sideline that night in San Francisco as Bridges' pinkie went askew were bigger than who would guard Stephen Curry. The injury, had it sidelined Bridges, would have bent the Suns' culture sideways just like it did Bridges' smallest digit.
“My heart just sunk, not just because he was hurt but because of what he means to our team, what he means to me, and how hard he works,” said Williams.
This year, Bridges is again leading the Suns in minutes and net rating. He is also taking the natural charisma and confidence that teammates are drawn to and channeling it into leadership. The gradual acclimation to Phoenix, to this franchise, it's a familiar cycle to those who have followed Bridges' career.
'The group of guys we have, from the front office to the coaching staff, I knew I wanted to be here.'
- Mikal Bridges, Phoenix Suns | Forward
During the summer of 2019 after Williams was hired, Bridges was busy. He had stayed in the Valley to keep honing his craft, and his commitments were piling up. After meeting his new coach, Bridges jetted off to Las Vegas, where he had been invited to train with the Team USA Select Team. There, Bridges' intensity caught the eye of an old enemy from his Villanova days, Gonzaga head coach Mark Few.
Few then dialed up a former Gonzaga staffer named Riccardo Fois who had just taken a job on Williams' Suns staff. Fois remembers Few telling him how well he would mesh with Bridges, calling the young Sun “special.”
“It's a cliche, but he is one of those guys that makes every coach look good,” Fois says.
Soon, Fois was assigned, along with then-Suns assistant Darko Rajakovic, to work closely with Bridges on a day by day basis. The two bonded quickly, not only from the nostalgia of their old cross-country Villanova-Gonzaga rivalry but also their shared “crazy” dedication on the court.
They shared meals, often alongside forward Cameron Johnson, a fast friend of Bridges'. They obsessed over little details, avoiding any talk of excuses and constantly looking for ways to get better. When Fois and Bridges did butt heads, it was almost always about how to pull back.
“The most (common) argument me and Mikal had was about days off,” Fois says, “because sometimes I had to almost make him take a day off because he was playing 30 minutes a night guarding the best player and we still had like 25 games ahead.”
At the same time, Bridges was getting more comfortable in Phoenix. The draft-night deal from the 76ers pulled him away from his family, his girlfriend, and his home. But over time, he came to appreciate the Valley and its fans.
“It was tough when I first got traded to this city but once I came here and lived here and been around the people, I loved it,” says Bridges. “The group of guys we have, from the front office to the coaching staff, I knew I wanted to be here.”
While Bridges grew more comfortable and improved his game, the hard work began to pay off. Williams put him into the starting lineup just before the All-Star break in 2020, and after the NBA hiatus that year, he began to put it all together in the Bubble, making 40 percent of his threes and playing such lockdown defense that Suns fans online - and broadcaster Kevin Ray - created the idea of “Mikal Jail” for opposing ball-handlers, and gave him the nickname “The Warden” to match.
By the time the Suns traded for future Hall of Famer Chris Paul that fall, Bridges was ready to go. Bridges was one of the first players to turn Paul's head once he got to Phoenix. Last winter, Paul called him “one of the best guys I think I've ever been around.”
'He just signed a nice contract, so when you make that kind of money, you've got to take those shots, and that's just part of it. It's not because he got the money. He's earned it. But we have confidence in him.'
- Monty Williams, Phoenix Suns | Head Coach
The Suns came into camp preaching that “short breaks are earned,” a way of spinning a negative (hardly any break after a Finals run) into a positive. For Bridges, a short memory was important.
After a magical Game Two with 27 points, Bridges cooled off and his impact was stilted. In a deciding Game Six, Bridges scored just seven points and had an uncharacteristic four fouls in 39 minutes.
“Obviously you don't want to dwell on it, obviously it hurts, but when you mess up or not have what you want with your expectations, you just learn from it,” he says. “And that's the biggest thing I took from it.”
The series reinforced something Bridges already knew: That to bring the Larry O'Brien trophy back to Phoenix, his already dogged attention to detail would have to go up another level. But when camp began, it was hard to take the long view. Cameras were effectively already rolling, awaiting an answer from Bridges about his contract status and his future. He tried not to let it phase him.
“I think they weren't heavy on me as much as they were a lot of other people, so I think I had it pretty easy,” Bridges said.
Soon, the player whose draft-night move spawned endless stories about the hometown kid being dealt from Philadelphia out to the desert signed a new deal that locks him in through the 2025-26 season. A contract like that, no matter how you cut it up or talk about it, brings with it bigger expectations. It moves a player from growing to grown, fair or not.
Reminders have come fairly often already this year as Bridges takes on a leading role for the Western Conference-leading Suns. In a low-scoring game on Nov. 17 at home against Dallas, Bridges was pressed into action defending 7-footer Kristaps Porzingis on switch after switch late in the game. Ordinarily, Porzingis would own the mismatch. But Bridges' long arms forced multiple turnovers in crunch time to help the Suns pull in front.
The Suns needed more. The offense had been too quiet. Despite a quiet scoring performance, Bridges took in a pass from Paul with under four minutes to go and the Suns down 1. In one motion, Bridges let it fly from three, and the ball found the bottom of the net. The lead stuck in what became a tenth straight Phoenix win.
“The guys on our team expect him to take those shots, and he's getting used to being in that position,” Williams said. “He just signed a nice contract, so when you make that kind of money, you've got to take those shots, and that's just part of it. It's not because he got the money. He's earned it. But we have confidence in him.”
A Franchise Cornerstone
The essence of Bridges, the stuff that makes him special, is best recognized day to day. That might be why he comes off as a secret only those in the Valley know about. Everything is about moving closer to a championship. Everything. Bridges speaks with a forward inertia that very nearly bypasses the excitement of what just happened.
A loss is a chance to learn and adjust. A win is the byproduct of the hard work that comes naturally to him. A personal accolade is simply what happens when the winning comes in bunches. It's the type of mindset that Williams wanted to instill from his first day as Suns head coach, but it took the acceptance of players like Bridges to take it from an idea to a culture.
“If you come in on a day to day basis and you see a guy working, you see a guy getting better and you pair that up with production, that gives somebody from the outside confidence in this person from a professional standpoint,” says Suns assistant Brian Randle. “Now, if you're around him in addition to that and you get to know him and see how fun-loving he is and how genuine he is, because he's not trying to put on, and you pair those things up, that gives you a lot of credibility.”
It's bigger than working hard and being easy going. Bridges has had to sacrifice a great deal as well. There's so little he can't do that stitching together the right bag can be challenging.
“I think the biggest aspect (of his work) is how can he help the Phoenix Suns?” says Fois. “And that's what many players, when they work really hard at the highest level, sometimes they forget. The most important thing is, get better at the things you can do to help the team win.”
On a team with All-Stars in Devin Booker and Chris Paul and a budding two-way force in the middle like Deandre Ayton, Bridges' role is clearly defined. It's all about doing the most within that structure.
“Mikal was such a master of that, maximizing Chris and Book and D with this movement, with his finding himself open, making big shots, running in transition hard,” adds Fois.
There will be opportunities for Bridges to expand his game in time. Suns assistants past and present see room to grow as a ball-handler, as a finisher, maybe even as a post player. But the special thing about Bridges is he can make an elite impact without doing that stuff, and that he revels in executing in the margins.
“I don't think he cares at all about that and to be honest, I think that's the result of the culture that Monty and James set and (that) all the players bought into,” Fois says. “There is no one guy there who thinks like that. I think that the best I can hope for in Mikal's career is that he wins four or five NBA titles.”
Since Bridges was drafted, the Suns have overhauled the roster and the basketball culture to build around winners. It's no accident Bridges survived that reset, and it's no surprise he has become the vital center of a Suns team, a connecting force that's as sticky as his own hands can be in the passing lanes.
Outside of a big transition connection with Booker here and there or at the buzzer of a decisive win, Bridges isn't one to be overly demonstrative on the court. He lets his play speak for itself. That's the same tact he takes at practice and in the locker room as well, and it works.
“When you're around him, you can't help but take notice, you can't help but give him the stamp of alright, this is one of our leaders,” says Randle. “Maybe he's not going to be vocal 100 percent of the time, but when he does speak up, we're for sure going to listen. And when he's out there playing, we know what he's going to give us. You've always got that stable piece in the organization, on the team, to point to and say our standard is set with this guy.”
Adds Bridges: “That just naturally comes with how close I am with everybody, but also just leading by example on the court.”
There's a lot more Bridges can do. Maybe one day he will do all of it. Right now, though, his imprint on the game is seen in the sum of quiet delights. The impact is exponential. That's why it was so hard to imagine even one game without him on that night in the Bay.
“You see so many things that it's the cumulative of them all that to me is like, 'what am I supposed to do?'” says Randle. “As soon as I see one clip, he goes and makes another clip. And then there's another clip. And I'm going to go one step further: That makes it contagious. Because we can talk about him, but then he has an effect on other guys as well.
“It's really his night in, night out consistency. If you're going to point to something, that's what you point to. You point to not a block, not a shot made, not a steal, not a deflection, not anything else. You take the whole of his career thus far and how he's gotten better and how he's produced, and you go and look at his career, not one game missed, and that's Mikal Bridges.”