Nets’ Mikal Bridges on tough Cavaliers defense: ‘trying to make the play’
NEW YORK — Brooklyn Nets guard Mikal Bridges has been showing the world how talented he is ever since he came to Brooklyn last season. Starting with Wednesday’s season opener against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Bridges saw how he has his work cut out for him when it comes to getting to his sweet spots on the floor.
“We just gotta have counters,” Bridges said when asked for his takeaways from Wednesday’s 114-113 loss to the Cavaliers. He had 20 points on the night, but he had a rough start in the beginning due to the way that Cleveland was playing Bridges off the ball.
Bridges saw a lot of defenders playing over the top, also known as top-locking, and that caused him a lot of issues over the first three quarters of the contest. The former Villanova Wildcat found some success trying to cut away from the ball and using that overplay leverage against the defense. However, it’s clear that Brooklyn has to incorporate those kinds of actions into the offense.
“We got to just have, an offense,” Bridges said. “Just plays, even if you get denied or something, we got to know what’s next. We got to know what we got to do, second action, or if they’re top -locking everything, and back cut hit the big, we got to flow. We got to know what we’re doing.”
One of the noticeable themes from the game was that the Nets could benefit from implementing some backdoor-cutting into their offensive sets whenever Bridges and Cam Johnson are being overplayed. Cleveland is also one of the better defensive teams in the league so it’s possible that this is just a tough test for an evolving offense.
