The NBA champion Mikal Bridges went live on Instagram tonight and dove into several topics with candid opinions on multiple things around the league. But in the process, he also confirmed the reports that claimed the Knicks owner, James Dolan, jokingly asked the team to indulge in celibacy for 10 weeks if they want to win the championship.
“He brought n—-s in and said, ‘Ten weeks! Don’t have any s–. Lock in,” Bridges said on the stream. “N***a’s a savage. He’s a savage! He could be a bigger savage if he built a practice facility in the city. But he’s still a savage.”
Mikal addressing the 10 weeks no sex rule Dolan made 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/E0osLNpAIE
— amandaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (@outmycoma) June 15, 2026
Shortly after that, raw footage was released of James Dolan’s 15-minute-long motivational speech to the Knicks’ locker room from before the playoffs. In a part of that speech, he also addresses this suggestive rule with an incentive.
“The big word is sacrifice. You’re going to have to sacrifice if you want to achieve this. You have to have a discussion with yourself about what these next 10 weeks are. Because it’s only 10 weeks, it’s not a long time.”
“But if you can now focus yourselves, sacrifice everything around you for these next 10 weeks to win that championship, then I believe you can do it. I’ve seen you do it this season, and you’ve seen yourselves do it. You know you can do it. I believe you know you can do it. But will you do it?”
“You need to sacrifice, and you need to eliminate all the distractions around you. I’m going to tell you now, stop talking to the press. Instead, talk to each other. Press doesn’t mean anything. You want to communicate with your teammates, you want to communicate with the staff, etc., do it. Just forget the press.”
“Doesn’t matter what the public thinks of you. I could tell you I’ve been doing this for 30 years, right? The the and at the end of these 10 weeks, what you achieve is what the public is going to think of you, not what you say, right, in the press conferences, etc. It’s what will determine the outcome in 10 weeks. That’s when what you say will have real meaning.”
“In the meantime, talk to each other. Give your concerns, your gripes, etc. Do it with each other. Commit to that. I got some other suggestions for you.”
“You need to start, you need to up your practice. You need to pay more attention to your diet. You need to sleep better. You need to be ready for every game.”
“And just let me start on that point. That is not something you start in the first game of the playoffs. That is something you start right now, today. You have to practice this right for the next few games and the next four games so that you’ve got a rhythm to yourselves when you get it when you get into the playoffs.”
“I suggest that you go home and you talk to your families, you talk to your girlfriends, your wives, etc. And you tell them about the next 10 weeks, about how you’re going to be different the next 10 weeks, and how your families are going to sacrifice for the next 10 weeks.”
“I had this idea that maybe you should give up s– for the next 10 weeks. You don’t have to give up sex for the next 10 weeks. But like Spartans, you know what Spartans are, right? They denied themselves, right? So that they could have an edge. Get the edge.”
“Go home. Talk to your wives. Don’t tell them you’re not going to have sex. Don’t tell them it was my idea, but let them know what this is going to be like, what your commitment is going to be like, and how they’re going to have to sacrifice, too. Those concerns at home, they can’t come on the court. They can’t come into the practice. They will be for the next 10 weeks.”
“This has just got to be all about us and about how we play. Just my It’s not who we play, it’s how we play. because I believe this team can beat anybody in the NBA. We’ve already shown that we can. So, it’s not who we play, it’s how we play.”
“So, when you go home, and you talk to your brides and your significant others, I do want you to tell them one thing that I said. When we win the championship, right, we will get rings. And when we get rings, so will they.”
“I will buy a ring for each one of your significant others because their contribution is going to be very important to this team win and we and you know if you don’t have a significant other most of you do find someone that you that is sharing this journey with you for the next 10 weeks and make that person come with you guys right and we’ll give that person a ring.”
So while Dolan was clearly joking and we cannot determine a clear correlation between the abstinence and their performance, the emotion still resonated with the team enough to lock in on the court and zone out the distractions completely.
After trailing the Atlanta Hawks 2-1 in the first round, New York went on a 13-game winning streak to finish the postseason with a 16-3 record. The run featured a five-game series victory over the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals, a sweep of the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round, and a sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Conference Finals.
OG Anunoby’s tip-in to finish a 29-point comeback in Game 4 of the Finals was arguably the most iconic moment of them all. So clearly, in the end, things seem to have worked out well for the Knicks, so we should give Dolan credit for that.
