WATCH: Knicks’ Mikal Bridges Hits Game-Winner Against Trail Blazers

No matter what Mikal Bridges things of his minutes with the New York Knicks, he no doubt enjoyed the final second of his most recent metropolitan excursion.

Bridges capped off an eventful day in Knicksland in style, sinking a game-winning, buzzer-beating three-pointer that proved to be the difference in a 114-113 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday night-into-Thursday morning at Moda Center. It's the first game-winner of its kind — one where the last shot of the game left no time for the shocked opponent to counter — since January 2022, when RJ Barrett busted Boston at Madison Square Garden.

"Just win the game, find the right read," Bridges, the game's leading scorer with 33 points, said of his final possession mindset in in his postgame interview with Mike Breen and Jamal Crawford of MSG Network. "It looked good. Sometimes I fade a little bit, it might go a little left or right. But as I kept falling to the left, it looked like it was staying straight, so it felt good."

MIKAL BRIDGES, ARE YOU SERIOUS!!?

33 POINTS AND THE GAME-WINNING TREY 😤 pic.twitter.com/7iubWATP1Q
— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) March 13, 2025

"You know that [Jalen Brunson] is out and that's our brother and we love him and we're going to hold it down until he gets back. But it's just togetherness, man, fighting. A lot of miscues [were] happening, a lot of things were messing up, but we're going to fight until the clock hits zero."

Breen ended the interview by asking if Bridges was "feeling all right" after playing 41 minutes. It was perhaps the one lingering reminder of the relative controversy that hovered at tip-off, as Bridges was somewhat under fire for reportedly asking head coach Tom Thibodeau to cut down on starters' minutes amidst the metropolitan stretch run. Things only threatened to get more awkward when Thibodeau remarked that there "was no conversation" about the minutes in his pregame statements.

But the way the Knicks came out and scraped out a win against an upstart Portland team eager to impress should win over at least some doubters questioning New York's mental fortitude. If there is indeed a communication breakdown between Bridges and Thibodeau, they certainly did a brilliant job of hiding it at the perfect time, as the former scored by the latter's design en route to a much-needed victory that secured a winning season in Manhattan for the third consecutive year.

“At the end of the day, we’re all grown men,” Bridges teammate Josh Hart said, per James Edwards III of The Athletic. “We go out there and play the game as hard as we can, execute as hard as we can, and same thing with Thibs.”

"[Bridges] did what he did,” Hart added, per Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. “I think everything there was just focus and poise.”

Bridges' next opportunity to keep the metropolitan momentum alive lands on Saturday when New York ends this road trip against the Golden State Warriors (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC).

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