Phoenix Suns: Grades for every player this season

Mikal Bridges

Grade: B+

Stats: 8.7 points, 4 rebounds, 1.4 steals per game

Mikal Bridges is who he is. He’s not going to be a consistent 20-point per night scorer (although he’s certainly capable of big games) but you can always count on him to defend well.

He is the embodiment of the coaching cliche, “Doing things that don’t show up in the box score.” Perhaps nothing showcases this more than the trust Monty Williams places in him to close out games.

While he only started about 37% of the total games this season, Bridges finished nearly all of them, often getting the nod over Dario Saric in the 4th quarter.

And after sitting out training camp with a knee issue, Bridges was the only player on the Suns roster to play in all 65 of the team’s games this season. The next closest was Devin Booker with 62.

Bridges is tough to grade because, only being his second year, it hard to expect too much from him, but at the same time, you see him improve as much as he did from the beginning of the season to the end of the year and you can’t help but want and expect a little bit more from him, even though, overall he’s been a great version of himself.

Bridges is a smart guy and I can’t help but think he’s only going to keep improving and once his frame fills out a little bit more, his defense will only get better.