Mikal Bridges aware of how Suns will always be linked to Game 7 collapse

Phoenix Suns wing Mikal Bridges shared his feelings on the team’s shocking exit in the Western Conference semifinals to the Dallas Mavericks on The Old Man and the Three Podcast with JJ Redick and Tommy Alter (explicit language warning).

It was a Game 7 loss in Phoenix when the Suns were down 30 points at halftime and trailed by as many as 46 in the second half.

The Suns did not have end-of-season availabilities for any players and the likes of Bridges, Devin Booker, Cam Johnson and Chris Paul for the postgame media session did not share much about how they felt about the severity of the loss.

Bridges’ thoughts were the first publicly from a player since then for a defeat Bridges admitted had him feeling “definitely embarrassed.”

He’s aware of the ramifications in terms of how people will look at not only the 2021-22 Suns but that group in the future as well.

“It’s gonna be known,” he said. “Every time somebody talks about a Game 7 you just know it’s going to be thrown there. … All they remember is going to be that Game 7. Even the series, they’re (just) going to remember that Game 7. Get ready for next year and all they’re gonna talk about is, ‘You remember what happened in Game 7?'”

Bridges noted how confident the team was after a Game 5 win that the series would get wrapped up in the following Game 6 on the road, something they did as a team twice last postseason.

“We had a feeling we all thought we was going to win in Dallas and then once they won it was kind of like, even if it was home advantage, it’s like you know better than me,” Bridges said. “Game 7 is just now it’s up for grabs.”

When Dallas’ surge at the start of Game 7 quickly created a snowball effect, Bridges noted how difficult it is to reset and knock down shots in those moments when there is a sense the home crowd is on edge.

“It’s always sometimes tough at home when somebody go on a run or whatever and you’re missing and you can hear your crowd [sighing],” he said.

Bridges told Redick and Alter he kept looking up at the scoreboard and called it “ridiculous” to trail by 30 at the half.

And speaking to a potential indicator that the Suns were too confident with the matchup against the Mavericks, Bridges said he didn’t think the Suns would get eliminated, especially by Dallas, given how Phoenix had won the last nine meetings.

“It’s just like every time we play them we’re like, ‘Oh, we have their number, we have their number,” he said. “Those [expletives] got us.”

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