Mikal Bridges and Ricky Rubio sightings as Suns get set for week of scrimmages

Let your worries subside, sweet Suns fans. Both Mikal Bridges and Ricky Rubio popped up this weekend after evading the cameras for most of July as the Suns descended upon the Wide World of Sports in Orlando.

For Bridges, it was a lengthy Q&A with media during a typical post-practice media session, in which he touched on the work he’s done on his jump shot with assistant coach Darko Rajakovic. Both Bridges and head coach Monty Williams hope he can rediscover his smooth Villanova jumper before long.

Many a sleuthing Suns fan had searched for Bridges — who was a frequent contributor on media calls and on social media during most of the NBA shutdown — during the first few days of minicamp in Orlando, but to no avail.

I won’t speculate where Bridges has been, but many, such as Joe Vardon of The Athletic, have discussed the challenges of coaxing comments on specific players out of coaches in the Bubble. Williams has been steadfast about not discussing who is with the team or who has participated in practice, and regardless of why Bridges went silent for a while or even if he was late to arrive, the important part is he’s there now and will be available when the season starts July 31.

As you can hear in the video above, Bridges did not touch on when he arrived or anything of that nature.

Our eyes on Rubio were far more fleeting, but hopefully as meaningful. Rubio appeared in the latest episode of “Don’t Sleep On Basketball,” the team’s video series about the NBA restart.

Rubio can be seen packing for the Bubble and explaining why he’s loading up on reading materials for the long hours in the hotel room. An interesting side note based on the clip above is that Rubio says he often reads two copies of the same book at once — one in English and the other in Spanish.

Of course, the video above is not evidence of Rubio actually being in the Bubble, so don’t jump to any conclusions, but clearly the Suns used this clip in the new episode of the series based on the expectation that Rubio would be in Orlando at some point. That’s more concrete evidence of his participation than we’d previously gotten.

The remaining players who we have not heard from or seen in the Bubble are Aron Baynes, Elie Okobo, Jalen Lecque and Tariq Owens.