Just how similar are they?
Among Phoenix Suns fans, rookie Ryan Dunn is often compared to former Sun Mikal Bridges. It’s hard not to do so since they’re quite similar in many ways. Both primarily play small forward, are 6’6”, have 7’1” wingspans, are nearly the same in weight (Dunn is 6 lbs heavier) and both are/were 22 as NBA rookies. When Bridges was drafted, he was considered an excellent 3&D prospect. With Ryan… everyone was almost certain the D was there but the 3 part was a question mark resulting in him falling to 28th in his draft class while Mikal was taken 10th in his.
As we all know now, the concern over his ability to hit NBA threes was overblown.
Comparing present-day rookie Ryan Dunn to present day 6+ year NBA veteran Mikal Bridges certainly puts Dunn at a disadvantage but using Mikal’s 1st year stats we can compare their rookie vs rookie performances. Fantable member OldAz asked me to compare the two recently and since it was an interesting idea, I thought it was worth the time to undertake the task and the more I looked at and compared those stats, the more interesting it seemed to get!
Here I’m going to present those stats side by side and point out a few of the more interesting things (in my opinion). I’ll start out with an overview of both Ryan’s and Mikal’s stats over the 1st 41 games with the Suns in each of their rookie seasons.
Overall, their stats are very similar, more similar than I had thought they would be probably because my strongest memories of Mikal are of him later in his time with the Suns rather than earlier when he was much less seasoned and polished. While there are many similarities, there are some notable differences too.
I was surprised that Dunn actually has a higher FG percentage than Mikal had (46.2% vs 41.1%) at midseason. It’s not remarkably higher but the 5.1 percent difference – especially when their FGAs were exactly the same and their 3-pt attempts per game were virtually the same (3.6 & 3.8) – is significant. Bridges won the 3-pt percentage battle but just barely, 33.8% to 32.6%.
Even though both players are known as strong defenders, Mikal’s stats show him to have been the better “thief” (1.4 steals per game vs Dunn’s 0.5) with Dunn the slightly better shot blocker (0.7 vs 0.5 per game).
Dunn’s rebounding stats are slightly higher than Bridges’ (3.5 vs 2.8) but perhaps a more telling stat lies in their respective game highs in rebounding as rookies. Bridges’ best rebounding performance in a single game as a rookie, and this is for the entire season, not just the 1st half, was 7. He had 7 in 4 different games but Dunn already has 11, 9, 8 and 7 rebound games to his credit.
Perhaps the biggest and most obvious difference between their stats is in free throws. Don’t ask me to explain why Dunn is shooting just 47.4% at the line while Mikal made 84.1% of his FTs. Other than it being a mental issue, I see no reason for Dunn being such a poor FT shooter.
Their respective highs as rookies aren’t that different though:
- Dunn’s highs in the 1st half of the season: 18 pts, 11 rebs 4 threes in one game, 3 steals, 2 blocks
- Mikal’s highs (over his entire rookie season): 20 pts, 7 rebs, 5 threes in one game, 5 steals, 3 blocks
Ryan also recorded his first career double-double in his 36th game as a pro. Mikal did not record his first double-double until his 146th game during his 2nd NBA season. Dunn has scored in double figures for 5 straight games. Mikal did not do that during his entire rookie season.
The following graphic breaks down their stats by month.
There are some interesting things in these stats but nothing that really jumps out more than Mikal’s stats seem smoother with less variation overall month to month than Ryan’s. I don’t think many conclusions could be drawn from them as the only thing in in common between the Suns’ teams each of them play/played on is that they are/were teammates with Devin Booker. In Mikal’s rookie year, the Suns won 2 games less over that entire season (2018-19) than this year’s team has won halfway through 2024-25 so the situations each player had to deal with are/were very different.
In the end, it’s clear that rookie Ryan Dunn and rookie Mikal Bridges actually are very similar players overall. Does that mean Dunn’s NBA future will be similar to Bridges’? No, but it does show that he’s already playing at about the same level that Bridges was at when he was a rookie and indicates one possible path he could go down in the future, and it’s pretty bright path.
Could Ryan ultimately turn out to be as good as or even better than Mikal has become? Well, I think that’s quite possible. Only time will tell.
All of this was fun to research. My thanks to OldAz for suggesting it.
Add your thoughts on how similar — or dissimilar — you think the two are below in the comments.