00:00Last night, for the first time all year,
00:03Mikel Bridges wasn't afraid of contact.
00:05He said, give me contact.
00:08Mikel Bridges took it to the basket.
00:10He was aggressive.
00:11And here's why this is so important.
00:13As bad as he was three games ago,
00:16as much as he got benched by Mike Brown,
00:18do you remember what I said to you guys after that game?
00:20I said, remember this about Mikel Bridges.
00:22You need him.
00:23You need him.
00:24If you're going to win an NBA championship,
00:26and this team certainly has a chance to do so,
00:28I would look at them as the favorites in the Eastern Conference.
00:30More on that later.
00:31They can't have Mikel Bridges being benched.
00:34They can't have soft Mikel Bridges.
00:37Not just because you need him defensively.
00:39You need him to contribute like he did.
00:40On both sides, yes.
00:41Yeah.
00:42And so I think getting the best of Mikel Bridges,
00:45it's important.
00:46We can't just look at it as, ah, bench his ass.
00:49We got Deuce McBride.
00:50No, no.
00:50If you need to get those 12 more wins, which is the goal,
00:54you need everybody.
00:55There's going to have to be contributions from everybody.
00:57And I thought last night was a positive sign from Mikel Bridges.
01:01He had that look in his eye that I don't know if we've even seen much of
01:04since he was traded here,
01:05especially because my biggest critique of Mikel,
01:08and I got no problem,
01:09I'll dish out the critiques and then I'll give credit where credit is due.
01:12For a year and a half now,
01:14we've talked about how it's almost like he's afraid of contact,
01:17how he doesn't want to go to the free throw line,
01:18how he settles for mid-range jumpers,
01:20how he's had this softness to him.
01:22And that wasn't the case last.
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