Mikal Bridges trade grade: Knicks make high-risk, high-reward move as Nets accelerate rebuild for draft-pick Hall

It’s been more than four decades since the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets made a trade, but their first trade since 1983 was worth the wait. Mikal Bridges will join former Villanova teammates Jalen Brunson, Donte DiVincenzo and Josh Hart on the Knicks. Brooklyn recovered a massive amount of draft picks, including two of their own picks from Houston as well as a total of five first-rounders and an unprotected swap from the Knicks. Joining in on the fun, the Rockets took control of the Suns’ two first-round selections, which they hope to redirect to Kevin Durant.

Friends, it’s okay to be a little confused. Trades of this magnitude are rare, especially between two teams from the same city. So let’s sort through the debris here and find out where each team stands. Here are our grades for Tuesday night’s blockbuster:

New York Knicks: B+

Let’s get this out of the way. This is a risk. Giving up control of five of your own first-round picks over a seven-year period leaves you incredibly vulnerable. If this goes wrong for any reason, there is no pivot here for the Knicks. Tanking is not an option. The roster that is built this off-season will be the team for the next few years, and possibly a few years after that. The Knicks didn’t give it all up for Kevin Durant, like Phoenix did a few years ago. They gave it up in Bridges for a player who was never an All-Star. This is a completely fair criticism. This is not an ideal trade for the Knicks.

But think about the Boston team that just won the championship. It did this with wings and shooting everywhere. More importantly, think about the teams that have beaten Boston recently. The Celtics struggle with physicality. They historically haven’t done a good job of playing the dirty game. Time and again, the Miami Heat have dragged matchups against the Celtics into the mud and beaten them there. Boston is the standard right now. Beating the Celtics is the goal every team is trying to achieve.

And the Knicks have somehow built a roster that emulates the Celtics and is designed to exploit its weaknesses. Bridges and OG Anunoby, assuming he is re-signed, give the Knicks two all-defense wings to throw to Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. Bridges is an elite shooter who has developed significantly as an individual creator thanks to his time in Brooklyn. Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo and Deuce McBride may be the best trio of bench wings in the NBA. But this is still Tom Thibodeau’s team. They’re still going to beat everybody. They are still beating everyone else. As of now, Julius Randle is still on the roster. Presumably at least one of Mitchell Robinson and Isaiah Hartenstein will be. This is the strength that Boston’s front line has been lacking. The Knicks could make things just as nasty for Boston as they did for Miami. Jalen Brunson can match Tatum and Brown shot-for-shot.

Getting Bridges will reduce the minutes burden on everyone, potentially keeping them healthier in the long run. Bridges has never missed an NBA game. All four Villanova players are still 20 years old, so this is going to be a game for several years. Bridges still has two years left on the extremely cheap rookie extension he signed in Phoenix, giving him one of the best value contracts in the NBA.

There are still questions here. For now, the reported version of the trade hard-caps the Knicks on the first apron. There are simple changes that could raise that level to the second apron, giving New York the power to spend about $57 million to finish out the roster, although Anunoby would take the majority of that money. Someone from last year’s roster will be sacrificed to the CBA gods. Leon Rose has not completed construction yet, so there is a degree of uncertainty here.

But that’s why you collect challenges. Had the Knicks stayed healthy in the playoffs, they likely would have reached the Eastern Conference Finals. Now they are much better equipped with a suitable roster to challenge the reigning champions. Nothing is guaranteed in the NBA, and giving up all this capital for a non-All-Star certainly won’t change that. But the Knicks have a chance to win the whole thing. This has not been true for decades. The risk is considerable. The reward is big. No matter how it played out, it was a gamble worth taking for New York.

Brooklyn Nets: A+

The Nets obviously didn’t get a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander-caliber young player back in this deal, but the only real analog in terms of value is the Paul George trade between the Thunder and Clippers five years ago. This deal has the chance to be completely transformational for Brooklyn, leaving behind an otherwise disappointing era and laying the foundation for one of the NBA’s most promising rebuilds.

At the deadline, it was reported that the Rockets were willing to give the Nets control of the first-round pick acquired in the James Harden trade in order to acquire Bridges for themselves. Many observers argued that Brooklyn should do so. There is no choice more valuable than your choice in the NBA. Taking control of your own choices opens the door to tanking. Then the Nets stood firm. They got back two of the three picks given to Houston in the deal, giving Brooklyn two years to break even and turn a profit. This is especially important with a loaded 2025 draft class approaching.

And the Brooklyn Picks were only part of the haul here. The Nets also get control of five unprotected Knicks picks over the next seven years (plus one more from the Bucks, though that’s less likely). Yes, I know, we just covered why this trade makes sense for the Knicks. But think historically about how teams have performed trading for Knicks picks. LaMarcus Aldridge was taken No. 2 overall in 2006 with the pick that originally belonged to the Knicks. Joakim Noah moved to No. 7 with the Knicks pick a year later. Gordon Hayward in 2010? A Knicks pick. Jamal died in 2016? You guessed it, a Knicks pick. The James Dolan-era Knicks have practically fielded an all-star team of top draft picks to rival the league. This is an organization you want to abbreviate. Even if the Knicks are great in the short term, what will they look like in 2031? We don’t have any information. Ultimately, even if it’s right for the Knicks, they will age and become expensive. These choices bring tremendous benefits.

Yes, the Nets had to give up control of two Suns picks to get their pick back. One of them is in 2025, when Phoenix is ​​likely to at least try to win. The second one in 2027 is more nonsense, but remember, the Nets can’t control how good or bad the Suns will be. They can do Control how bad they will be. Even if the Suns weaken before 2027, the Nets will probably have their pick.

Overall, the Nets traded a player who has never made an All-Star Game for one of the most absurd collections of future draft assets the NBA has ever seen. They now control their picks in six of the seven drafts between 2025-2031. They have four Knicks picks and a Knicks swap, a Suns pick and a Suns swap, a Mavericks pick and a swap, a Bucks pick and a 76ers pick. I put all those selections in a row not to flex the volume, but to increase variety. These are future picks from five different teams, accounting for one-sixth of the entire league. Some of those teams will send bad picks to the Nets. But someone is sending them good ones. The Nets have built a draft portfolio as good as any in all of basketball, and now that they also control some of their picks, they are in a position to properly rebuild the position for the first time since their unfortunate decision to trade for Kevin Garnett. Are in. And Paul Pierce.

Houston Rockets 😀

Think back to the last time the Nets were screwed because of another team’s unsafe first-round pick. That dilemma ended with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown on the Celtics. I can’t emphasize this enough: Such a scenario was on the table for the Rockets here. He controls Brooklyn’s unprotected picks in 2025, 2026 and 2027. Had he stayed out of it, he would have been a lottery pick in one of the stronger classes in the next few years. Without Bridges, the Nets had no short-term path to relevance. It was the Tatum-Brown scenario all over again.

And Houston botched it, going on a wild goose chase for Kevin Durant. Yes, controlling the two Phoenix picks would theoretically be helpful if the Suns ultimately elect to trade Durant for the same reasons the Nets benefit greatly from getting their picks back. But there are several glaring problems the Rockets are ignoring:

• The Suns have not shown any interest in trading Durant so far. Matt Ishbia has remained steadfast in his desire to keep last year’s roster together and see how it plays under Mike Budenholzer. Considering how few options they left to put that team together, it seems extremely unlikely to bet on him after one season.
• Let’s say the Suns choose to trade Durant. Devin Booker is still on the team, so it’s not like the Suns will go in the tank immediately, unless they elect to move their homegrown 27-year-old star. Does this seem likely? Probably not, right? So, under these specific circumstances, those picks from the Nets would likely have been more valuable to the Suns than their own picks. They could sell Booker on the idea of ​​getting two high Nets picks to rebuild around him.
• Let’s say the Suns choose to trade Durant and let’s say the Rockets, despite giving up those incredible Nets picks, offer the best package. None of this means anything if Kevin Durant doesn’t want to go there himself. The last time he demanded a trade he managed to effectively navigate his way towards his preferred destination, the Suns. What indication do we have that he wants to stay in Houston? As a reminder, he didn’t even have a meeting with the Rockets as a free agent in 2016… when he had in his prime James Harden, who was his teammate in Oklahoma City and whom he acquired years later Had lobbied the Nets to do so. If Durant involves himself in trade talks, he would likely want a more willing suitor. speaking of which…
• Let’s say the Suns choose to trade Durant, and let’s say Durant is interested enough in the Rockets to make it happen. Will Houston also be one of the Western Conference favorites? The Rockets finished 11th in the Western Conference. Four of their six most-used players last season were either 20 or 21 years old. While Alperen Sengun and Jalen Green are very promising, neither are ready-made co-stars yet, and Sengun, in particular, needs to work as an offensive center. Will this make Durant less? Will Amen Thompson learn to shoot faster to help this team? Fred VanVleet, Dillon Brooks and Jabari Smith all fit well next to Durant, but the Rockets don’t exactly have the star-studded roster Durant is looking for as he moves forward.

Houston, overall, is in a strong position. It features a very young and talented roster including the No. 3 pick on Wednesday. There were paths to sustainable victory that didn’t even involve Nets picks. But retaining him gave Houston a golden opportunity to take whatever approach it wanted to building its roster over the next several years. To pin all this on the expectation that a player turning 36 might be available before opening night is completely irresponsible.