Winners and Losers of the Mikal Bridges Trade to the New York Knicks
The Knicks wasted no time this offseason as they went to their in-town rival, the Brooklyn Nets, and acquired small forward Mikal Bridges for a haul of picks. From this deal, the Nets will receive Bojan Bogdanovic, five first-round picks, with four of them being unprotected, and a second-round pick in 2025. The Knicks will in turn receive Mikal Bridges and a second-round pick in 2026. It was expected that Mikal Bridges would be dealt this offseason, but it is surprising that he went to the Knicks. With this blockbuster trade to start the NBA offseason, who are the apparent winners and losers?
Winners
The Brooklyn Nets - The Brooklyn Nets absolutely fleeced the Knicks into overpaying for a good player in Mikal Bridges. The Nets needed to commit to a rebuild this offseason and they did that in a great way with this deal. They weren’t going to be able to build around Bridges the way they needed to in order to be competitive anytime soon, therefore acquiring an arsenal of picks made the most sense this offseason. Therefore, a huge congratulations is in order for this Nets front office because Mikal Bridges was probably only worth about half the compensation they got in return for him from the Knicks. Bridges looked really good while playing for the Nets the past two seasons because he was the only primary scoring option on the entire team outside of youngster Cam Thomas. By selling Bridges at his peak, the Nets got a great return for him and are now set up for long-term success.
Mikal Bridges - It was no surprise that Bridges wanted out of Brooklyn this offseason after another season of the team failing to come even close to the postseason. This past season Bridges averaged 20 points, five rebounds, and four assists a game while playing all 82 games for the Nets which is a great statline. It was understood by the Nets that Bridges was simply too good of a player to remain on a team that wouldn’t be able to get good players around him, so the team knew they had to trade him. Now that Bridges has been moved to the Knicks, he will be reunited with several players he played with in college which should help him integrate quickly with the team. On the Knicks, Bridges will not only gain a lot more popularity with a national audience but also should be playing in the playoffs for the next several seasons with the team as the Knicks should be a top contender in the Eastern Conference moving forward.
Losers
The New York Knicks - The Knicks have some obsession with acquiring former Villanova players as they now have four of them in their starting lineup. This can be a good thing as Villanova guys are known to be gritty and play hard on both ends of the court. This grittiness is what led the Knicks to have a successful run in the playoffs this past season. However, the addition of Mikal Bridges does not push them past the top contender in the Eastern Conference, the Boston Celtics. With them sacrificing so much draft capital to acquire Bridges, they can’t make another splashy move for years unless they trade one of their current players. Therefore, this move is head-scratching as they seem to be going all-in on a group that likely won’t be able to even make it out of their own conference. Additionally, their starting roster is now severely undersized at virtually every position. All of the Knicks starters, except at center, will now be six feet and six inches or under, making it tough for them to compete against bigger teams in the Eastern Conference like the Milwaukee Bucks or Philadelphia 76ers. They did improve defensively at guarding talented wing players which should improve their chances against the talented wing players for the Celtics, but this move doesn’t move the needle on improving their chances of winning the NBA Finals.
The Phoenix Suns - Although the Suns might not have been involved in this deal, they did ship Mikal Bridges as part of the Kevin Durant trade just over a year ago. As part of that deal, they gave away Mikal Bridges like he was just a good role-player along with four unprotected first-round picks for Kevin Durant. However, after watching the Phoenix Suns absolutely implode in this season’s playoffs, they are now left wondering what if they had never made the Kevin Durant trade and still had options for the future. Instead, they are likely going to have to trade either Kevin Durant or Devin Booker just to try and recoup some of their future this offseason because of the poor moves they made last offseason.
