Mikal Bridges’ all-too-familar Knicks slump means something more this year

It feels like we go through this every year because … well, we go through this every year. 

We go through stretches of the season when Mikal Bridges can’t buy a bucket and, worse, when he goes a string of games in a row when you have to check the final boxscore to make sure he’s played at all. 

That last part, of course, is never in question because, when Bridges took the Garden floor Sunday night against the Magic, he extended his NBA games-played streak to 641. Bridges really does play every day. And there really should be no reason to remind you that he’s played quite well in a lot of them, including the 166 he’d played as a Knick ahead of the weekend. 

It’s just that, when most pro basketball players go cold, they don’t take it to the wild extremes that Bridges does. When he goes into a funk, it sort of feels like he’s entered witness protection.