NEW YORK – Mikal Bridges lifted his chin slightly and turned the calendar in his head. The assignment: Name the last time he made a mistake at the basket.

After a few seconds of thought, he looked through narrowed eyes.

“Miami?” he guessed.

That match was at the end of October, weeks earlier. Bridges wasn’t right, even though his answer wasn’t far off.

Dillon Brooks of the Houston Rockets fouled Bridges on an alley-oop attempt that saw the New York Knicks wing score an and-1 on Nov. 4, though he missed the free throw. That means Bridges has gone eight games in a row without committing a shooting foul.

The beginning of Bridges’ time with the Knicks has been littered with idiosyncrasies, a trend that the rest of the team has mirrored as well. They’re not all bad and they’re not all good, but they all have a theme. They are strange – nothing more unusual than Bridges’ journey away from the free-throw line.

When he goes to the basket he fades, which is not new, but has become extreme in its regularity. He has committed just five shooting errors all season, two of which were on jumpers. There have only been three in the paint: the one in Houston and two more after an October win over the Indiana Pacers.

That’s been the experience of the Bridges-era Knicks, a team that traded five first-round picks, including four unprotected, for the former NBA All-Defensive wing this summer. The overall production is compiling – just not in a way anyone could have expected.

The shot that keeps him from making mistakes — the fallaway jumper he hits from inside 15 feet — has been so automatic that head coach Tom Thibodeau says he has no problem with Bridges leaning that way.

“(It’s a good shot) if you’re efficient with the shot,” Thibodeau said. “And he’s always been efficient with that shot.”

Bridges makes 54 percent of his attempts from floater range and a whopping 72 percent from mid-range. Yet he makes field goal errors on only 2.5 percent of his field goal attempts, nearly four fewer than in his previous career, according to Cleaning the Glass.

Bridges becomes a caricature of himself – and the Knicks follow him into the land of extremes.

As expected, the Knicks are scoring big, recently dropping 134 points in a blowout win over the Washington Wizards to move them to 8-6 on the season. They are third in the NBA in points per possession, but they didn’t get there in any simple way.

The Knicks rarely reach the line and rank just 28th in free throw attempts heading into Tuesday’s action, which isn’t normally a trait of a Thibodeau-led squad. They don’t take many threes, although Thibodeau would like to change that. The Knicks rank just 17th in three-point attempts, but that number has increased since the early parts of the season, when they didn’t infiltrate the deep paint enough to create long shots and passed up too many balls that presented themselves. .

The new look Knicks is still an unknown. Precious Achiuwa still hasn’t played, nor has Mitchell Robinson, though Achiuwa’s return will come before Robinson’s — and there’s still skepticism about how much Robinson will be able to contribute once he’s healthy. He didn’t look like normal after returning from ankle surgery last season. He now needs to have another operation on the same ankle.

Without him and Achiuwa, recovery would be a problem. So far that has not been the case. Karl-Anthony Towns was expected to take time to get used to his new job, as both the Knicks and Minnesota Timberwolves made a shape-shifting trade that wasn’t completed until midway through training camp. All Towns has done is put together the best season of his career to date. Especially when Towns dominated, the starting lineup had to clear opponents. So far that has not been the case.

The Knicks are still figuring things out, and so is Bridges.

His shooting form on midrange jumpers is different than his release on catch-and-shoot 3s. His routine during pre-match warm-ups is even more exaggerated, showing form more in line with the nervous slingshot that went viral during preseason.

He shoots 47 percent in Turn 3, compared to just 17 percent in corners from above the break.

He’ll curl up before he even touches a screener while manning Cam Thomas of the Brooklyn Nets, and then he’ll whack Dennis Schröder to save the same play. He avoids contact plays on both sides of the field. He’s a 28-year-old winger with defensive accolades, someone who was expected to regain the zest he exuded with the Phoenix Suns when he arrived in Manhattan, where the Knicks wouldn’t hand him the offensive burden he carried in Brooklyn. And yet, New York’s defense is nearly 20 points per 100 possessions worse when he’s in the game, according to Cleaning the Glass.

The Knicks could use defensive help, the expected companion of OG Anunoby and Josh Hart, who would give them the NBA’s most formidable combination on the wings. They rank just 21st in points allowed per possession. They could use a few more top-of-the-key 3-pointers. They could use a few more free throws, although they might not come from Bridges.

After all, the fadeaways work well, and it’s hard to criticize a short-midrange performance that led to so much swish.

When Bridges was in Phoenix, playing alongside Devin Booker and Chris Paul, the Suns turned into the mid-tier darlings of the league. Bridges has learned lessons from that.

“I think if you look at the playoffs, a lot of guys end up in the middle bracket,” he said.

The Suns made the NBA Finals one year and lost in the second round of the playoffs the next before trading Bridges to Brooklyn for Kevin Durant, who is arguably the greatest midrange destroyer ever.

Instead of pushing to the edge, Bridges now pulls up. When he gets to the paint, he makes contact with a shoulder and then falls back instead of charging into his defender, a move that could earn him a layup and also earn him more fouls.

That’s not a mistake, even if it is extreme.

“You pay guys like Rudy (Gobert) to protect the rim. You pay big guys to protect the rim,” Bridges said. “It’s not easy to go in there and just give them an opportunity to show why they make so much money averaging five blocks per game. So just read the game. A lane has been created and it’s not just for the rim and the 3s. You have the rest of the court too.”

(Photo: Luke Hales/Getty Images)