{"id":204376,"date":"2026-04-21T05:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/204376\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T05:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:45:07","slug":"three-knicks-are-to-blame-for-game-2-collapse-not-mikal-bridges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/204376\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Knicks are to blame for Game 2 collapse \u2014 not Mikal Bridges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a good look, mind you. It was an open shot near the sideline.<\/p>\n<p>But it was the wrong shooter. Mikal Bridges had been, to that point, a passive observer of the offense, a defense-first guard who combined for 18 attempts in the first two playoff games. There was nothing to suggest Bridges could win the game for the Knicks, and, just like in Game 2 of the first round against Detroit a year ago, he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Bridges missed the potential game-winner of<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/20\/sports\/knicks-collapse-in-stunning-game-2-loss-to-let-hawks-even-series\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Monday\u2019s 107-106 choke-job defeat<\/a>, hitting the side of the rim \u2014 it was way off, actually \u2014 reopening those recent wounds inflicted by Tyrese Haliburton and Aaron Nesmith.<\/p>\n<p>The problem, as it unfolded in front of a stunned Garden crowd, is that it should\u2019ve never come down to that Bridges shot at the buzzer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a good look, mind you. It was an open shot near the sideline. But it was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4777,1555,1556,21,56784,80162,9,11,1104,10,319,431,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-204376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-jalen-brunson","9":"tag-karl-anthony-towns","10":"tag-mike-brown","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nba-playoffs","13":"tag-nba-playoffs-2026","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-knicks","17":"tag-new-york-news","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-sports-columnists","20":"tag-sports-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}