Knicks, Bridges agree to 4-year, $150M extension

New York Knicks forward Mikal Bridges has agreed to a four-year, $150 million contract extension with the franchise, his agents, Sam Goldfeder and Jordan Gertler of Excel Sports Management, told ESPN’s Shams Charania on Thursday.

The deal includes a player option for 2029-30 and a trade kicker. Bridges is ineligible to be traded for six months after the signing extension.

By completing this new contract, Bridges takes a slight discount from his max extension number ($156 million) to help New York maintain flexibility to continue building the roster. Bridges, along with Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns and others, helped lead the Knicks to their first Eastern Conference finals appearance in 25 years last season.

With the Bridges deal sewn up — his contract was initially set to expire after the 2025-26 season — the most pressing question left in New York’s offseason has been resolved. The Brunson extension in 2024 and now the Bridges deal have given the Knicks flexibility to operate under both aprons of the salary cap, giving them room to add more players to the roster.

Bridges was coming off an up-and-down inaugural campaign with New York after having been traded to the club for five first-round draft picks last summer, which prompted speculation that the Knicks might seek to deal him rather than hammer out a big-money extension.

Bridges, who turns 29 in August, struggled early on as the Knicks used him to guard floor generals and ball handlers, a role the one-time runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year was unaccustomed to. His free throw attempts were down sharply from the season before as he adjusted from being a first or second option with the lowly Brooklyn Nets to being fourth in the Knicks’ pecking order on many nights. And he raised eyebrows within the relatively buttoned-down organization in March when he said he had asked then-coach Tom Thibodeau to back off a bit on the starters’ heavy minutes, telling reporters “sometimes it’s not fun on the body.”

But he was also effective in a number of ways, again playing in every single game while finishing second in the NBA in corner 3s made and third in the league — trailing Kevin Durant and Devin Booker — in field goal percentage from midrange (minimum 150 attempts). He came through in a handful of key moments during the postseason. Aside from having a pair of double-digit fourth quarters in the Celtics’ series, he also made key stops on the final plays of Games 1 and 2, in which the Knicks staged back-to-back 20-point comeback victories.