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Brooklyn Nets' Mikal Bridges Finds Silver Lining in In-Season Tournament Setback
The Brooklyn Nets did everything they could on Tuesday night to notch the win and be able to march toward the In-Season Tournament knockout stage.
The good thing, they did the former by outlasting the Toronto Raptors. But the latter wasn't; the Boston Celtics took Group C by pounding the Chicago Bulls and winning the three-team tiebreaker via point differential, while the New York Knicks sealed the wild-card position by topping the Nets and other second-placed teams in every East group via point differential.
Valuable lesson for Brooklyn
In the end, what mattered the most for the Nets was the lessons and extra win which they can use upon moving forward to the 2023-24 regular season. For Bridges, he sees the failure of not making it to the quarterfinals as a stepping stone to their vision.
Might be disappointing about the result, but Mikal still holds his head high that Brooklyn managed to gain positives and needed confidence as they continue their journey this season.
“We got guys playing hard and want to go to Vegas. We were pretty not being able to go but it just brings a little more [competitiveness] every night,” he said. “There's a lot of games that might be better if it's the reason for competitiveness, maybe like mid-season, like early season everybody's trying to win games, everybody's going to be competitive… It looks like pretty good right now.”
No hard feelings
Many players expressed their dissatisfaction about teams racking up points for point differential to enhance their chances to enter the In-Season playoffs. But amid being a victim of that with the Nets, Bridges sees no issue about it.
Bridges understands the desire why many teams employ this enticing strategy as it only promotes their desire to make it to the Elite 8 of the tournament.
“You just know what the reason is, it’s trying to make it to Vegas. There’s no harm at all. We know that point differential is a key besides just winning. If you win every game by one and other teams win every game by five you’re not gonna make it. You have to play the point differential as well,” he concluded.
