Team: New York Knicks · Status: standard contract · Position: SG/SF · Season age: 30 · Experience: entering ninth NBA season · Role: starting two-way wing · As of: 2026-07-18
2026-27 median projection
| GP | MPG | FG% | FT% | 3PM | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80 | 32.0 | .490 | .825 | 1.8 | 14.3 | 3.8 | 3.6 | 1.2 | 0.7 | 1.0 |
Correction 2026-07-18: MPG trimmed from 33.0 to 32.0 as part of rebalancing the team's 240 toward Shamet, whose four-year re-signing and 2025-26 baseline of 23.0 MPG made his prior 14-minute allocation indefensible. Bridges keeps the starting shooting-guard job — ESPN projects Shamet as a sixth man — and his durability, not his per-game rate, remains the reason he outperforms his category profile in points formats.
Approximate volume: 5.9 makes on 12.0 shots and 1.0 make on 1.2 free throws. Nine-cat: top 70-100 per game, stronger in totals. Points: B, with top-50 upside in systems rewarding stocks and games. Dynasty: 6.1/10.
Role and evidence
Bridges played all 82 games in 2025-26 and averaged 14.4 points, 3.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.9 threes, 1.3 steals, 0.8 blocks, and only 1.0 turnover in 32.8 minutes, shooting .490/.827 (Hashtag Basketball). The projection is intentionally close because the same coach, starters, and offensive role return.
He is a locked starter and secondary handler. McBride, Shamet, and Diawara divide his replacement minutes if he ever sits. Durability is a skill and a totals advantage, but projecting 82 games as the median would still be overconfident.
Market and source disagreement
ESPN ranked Bridges 19th in April H2H points, far above Barutha's No. 89 rapid redraft rank, Hashtag's No. 84 dynasty rank, and No. 112 keeper crowd rank. The gap is a format lesson: availability and defensive events can dominate certain points equations, while 14-15 points and low free-throw volume limit category z-scores.
Range
- Ceiling: 82 games, 16 points, four assists, and two stocks; top-45 totals value.
- Median: high-floor top-100 per game and meaningfully better season totals.
- Floor: the ironman streak finally breaks or defensive events regress; low usage leaves little compensation.
Confidence
Role: high. Minutes and games: high relative to the league, though not certain. Scoring/assists: high. Stocks: medium because defensive events fluctuate.
Career record
Pre-NBA: Villanova, redshirted 2014-15 then three playing seasons. 2015-16: 40 games, 20.3 minutes, 6.4 points, 3.2 rebounds on .521 FG and .299 from three. 2016-17: 36 games, 29.8 minutes, 9.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.0 assists on .549/.393/.911. 2017-18: 40 games, 32.1 minutes, 17.7 points, 5.3 rebounds, 1.9 assists on .514/.435/.851. Two national titles (2016, 2018), Big East co-Defensive Player of the Year in 2017, first-team All-Big East and third-team All-American in 2018, Big East Tournament MVP, and the Julius Erving Award as the nation's best small forward. The three-point stroke was built in college, going .299 to .393 to .435. Draft: 2018, round 1, pick 10, Philadelphia 76ers — traded on draft night to Phoenix for the No. 16 pick (Zhaire Smith) and an unprotected 2021 first. Phoenix later sent him to Brooklyn in the February 2023 Kevin Durant trade; Brooklyn sent him to New York in June 2024 for five first-round picks.
| Season | Age | Team | GP | MPG | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | 22 | PHX | 82 | 29.5 | 8.3 | 3.2 | 2.1 | 1.6 | 0.5 | 1.3 | .430 | .805 | 0.9 |
| 2019-20 | 23 | PHX | 73 | 28.0 | 9.1 | 4.0 | 1.8 | 1.4 | 0.6 | 1.0 | .510 | .844 | 1.0 |
| 2020-21 | 24 | PHX | 72 | 32.6 | 13.5 | 4.3 | 2.1 | 1.1 | 0.9 | 1.9 | .543 | .840 | 0.8 |
| 2021-22 | 25 | PHX | 82 | 34.8 | 14.2 | 4.2 | 2.3 | 1.2 | 0.4 | 1.4 | .534 | .834 | 0.8 |
| 2022-23 | 26 | PHX | 56 | 36.4 | 17.2 | 4.3 | 3.6 | 1.2 | 0.8 | 1.8 | .463 | .897 | 1.4 |
| 2022-23 | 26 | BKN | 27 | 34.2 | 26.1 | 4.5 | 2.7 | 1.0 | 0.6 | 2.5 | .475 | .894 | 1.8 |
| 2023-24 | 27 | BKN | 82 | 34.8 | 19.6 | 4.5 | 3.6 | 1.0 | 0.4 | 2.7 | .436 | .814 | 2.0 |
| 2024-25 | 28 | NYK | 82 | 37.0 | 17.6 | 3.2 | 3.7 | 0.9 | 0.5 | 2.0 | .500 | .814 | 1.6 |
| 2025-26 | 29 | NYK | 82 | 32.8 | 14.4 | 3.8 | 3.7 | 1.3 | 0.8 | 1.9 | .490 | .827 | 1.0 |
| Career | 638 | 33.2 | 14.7 | 3.9 | 2.9 | 1.2 | 0.6 | 1.8 | .485 | .842 | 1.2 |
The 2022-23 season is split across two rows because the trade fell mid-season: 56 games in Phoenix as a third option, then 27 games in Brooklyn as the first option at 26.1 points per game. The 83-game total is real — the trade timing gave him one extra game.
Fantasy history: Season-end nine-category ranks from a primary rater were not verifiable in this pass, so no year-by-year finish is asserted. The box-score shape is legible without them: 2020-21 and 2021-22 were his efficient low-usage seasons (elite percentages, 1.4-1.9 threes, top-tier turnover economy) that played as solid mid-round category value; 2023-24 in Brooklyn was his highest-volume season and simultaneously his worst efficiency (.436 FG on career-high usage with 2.0 turnovers), the classic case of counting stats rising while category value did not; 2024-25 and 2025-26 in New York traded volume back for efficiency. In points leagues he grades materially better than in categories, because his value is concentrated in games played and low turnovers rather than in per-game production, and 82 games of anything beats 65 games of slightly more. ESPN's April 2026 board had him 19th for points leagues against Hashtag's No. 84 dynasty rank — that spread is the format difference, not a disagreement about the player.
Durability: 82, 73, 72, 82, 83, 82, 82, 82. Bridges has never missed a game in his NBA career. The 73- and 72-game seasons were the COVID-shortened 2019-20 and 2020-21 calendars, in which he played every game his team played. He finished 2025-26 at 638 consecutive games, the longest active streak in the league and eighth-longest in NBA history. There are no games-missed causes to list. One caveat on how the streak is maintained: in a late-season game against Charlotte, Mike Brown played him 23 seconds specifically to extend it, so a small number of appearances are nominal rather than functional.
Trajectory: Bridges is eight years into a career with two distinct shapes and he has now settled back into the first one. The 2022-23 Brooklyn stretch and the 2023-24 season proved he can carry a 20-plus-point usage load, but it also proved what that costs — .436 from the field and 2.0 turnovers in 2023-24 are the worst marks of his career, and they came with the ball in his hands most. Every efficient season he has had, including both New York years, came at lower usage. The 2025-26 line is the cleanest version of what he actually is: 14.4 points on .490/.371/.827 with 3.7 assists, 1.3 steals, 0.8 blocks and a single turnover per game in 32.8 minutes, with the stocks rebounding to their best combined level since 2020-21 and minutes down four from the prior year. At 30 entering 2026-27 he is at the point on the wing aging curve where athleticism-dependent defensive events start to decay, and the minutes cut suggests New York is already managing that. The projection risk is not decline in production — it is that the same production in 30 minutes instead of 33 quietly drops him a tier, while the games-played edge that carries his points-league value is the one thing that cannot get better.
Career sources: ESPN career stats, Wikipedia — Mikal Bridges, NBA.com — Bridges extends streak to 638 games
Open questions
- Does Brown expand Bridges' secondary playmaking after the title run?
- Which league scoring rules explain any top-25 points rank before draft day?