Knicks, Mikal Bridges take a tumultuous day in stride

PORTLAND, Ore. — If you stand on one side of the Willamette River that dissects downtown Portland you can see the Moda Center across the bridge and beside you a huge mural that declares, “Keep Portland Weird.”

Mikal Bridges and the Knicks did their part Wednesday.

The day began with Bridges, the player leading the NBA in minutes played with a consecutive- games-played streak that is 539 games long — never sitting out in his entire career — expressing a belief that the Knicks starters should play fewer minutes and explaining a conversation he had with coach Tom Thibodeau about it. Hours later, Thibodeau began his animated reply by announcing that the conversation had never taken place.

That was, well, weird.

Want to make it weirder? While some in the organization wondered what the fallout would be, Thibodeau put Bridges in the starting lineup as always and in the final seconds of overtime with the Knicks down by two, Thibodeau huddled the team up for a timeout and drew up a play for Bridges to deliver the first game-winning buzzer-beater of his Knicks career.

“We know Kel,” Josh Hart said. “We know where his heart is and everything like that. That’s background noise. We’re all locked into doing what we’ve got to do down the stretch and win games.”

“He hit the shot,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “He’s the man of the hour, for sure. Got the ball and was confident. And I think what was better about the shot is he just missed one and had the confidence to get it again and shoot it again. And to take a tougher shot. So shoutout to him.

“As a team we have confidence in him so we have confidence in everyone. We felt good about giving him the ball.”

A wild celebration on the court followed the shot as Thibodeau raised his arms and then Bridges’ teammates piled on him. And once again, everything was right. And why wouldn’t it be for a team winning a second straight game without Jalen Brunson, finding heroics from different places as they moved to 42-23 on the season?

But the weird thing is that for the most part the drama of the daytime didn’t seem to knock the Knicks’ locker room off its axis, even with team captain Brunson back in New York working on rehabilitating his sprained ankle.

Other than Bridges the locker room was lighthearted before the game, players joking about the comments and the fallout. And it was the same after the game, the mood jubilant with players shouting across the room. Bridges mostly sat quietly, scrolling through his phone.

When he finally spoke to the media long after most of the team was gone from the locker room, he had little to say — perhaps understandably after the furor that had come from his morning words. His entire postgame commentary consisted of 23 words. Asked about the game-winner coming after the weird day, “Yeah, just happy to win, pretty much.”

Any fissures were healed for the day, but it wasn’t just this day, though. The Knicks’ locker room is nearly to a man an assortment of characters, outgoing, funny and talkative. Bridges is quiet and reserved, reluctant to speak to the media and teammates, and coaches off the record say that he isn’t much different when press isn’t in the room.

And Bridges’ comments about minutes were an outlier to the mood of the stars of the team. Hart jokes about it, but as Thibodeau pointed out, “Josh never wants to come out.” Brunson has be pried off the floor even when he’s been knocked around and carrying the team on his shoulders.

Thibodeau and Bridges put aside any dysfunction or debate by treating the weird as normal Wednesday. Does it mean that it will all be forgotten and all is well now? That remains to be seen and maybe won’t be known until the Knicks front office considers the fact that Bridges is eligible for a pricey contract extension this summer and has to decide just how he fits in long term after the team surrendered five first-round picks to trade for him.

The 33-point performance, the game-winning shot and Thibodeau’s willingness to push aside any distractions to focus on his only goal — winning a game — pushed that all aside for a day.

“At the end of the day we’re all grown men,” Hart said. “At the end of the day we don’t let newspaper clippings or clickbait . . . affect us in a negative way. We go out there and we play the game as hard as we can. We try to execute as hard as we can and the same thing with Thibs.”

Now, the Knicks were headed out to the bus and on the way to the airport with one last stop on the five-game West Coast trip. But that was bound for San Francisco, where Golden State awaits with Draymond Green, who started a cross-country firestorm last week with his bizarre comments about Towns.

So the circus won’t be left behind. Maybe it’s not Portland that’s weird.