I came into this highlight-making excursion wanting to find out exactly how “Mikal” is supposed to be pronounced, and I left it not much closer to my goal. I thought it would just be pronounced “Michael”, you know, like normal, but apparently it’s not, because that variation was not uttered even one time that I heard.
Instead I heard “Mike-ELL” and “Mykhail” (come on Doris does this guy look Russian to you?), but I didn’t hear Mick-ELL, which is how basketball-reference alleges his name is pronounced. ESPN in general can’t be counted on to get much of anything right, so relying on them for factual information such as correct name pronunciations was a bad idea in the beginning, but still, have some consistency when you’re butchering the guy’s name.
So this guy (who certainly doesn’t visually appear to be related to Miles Bridges in any way) just went out and scored 16 points on national television. That’s good. Is he better than Danuel House? Unclear. Can he dunk? Resounding YES. Can he shoot? Apparently so. Is he already less of a bust than Dragan Bender? I think so.
Anyway, I’m going with Mick-AL until somebody tells me otherwise, or I make a highlight video for this dude from a non-national game so I can hear the Suns commentators say it.