Knicks Acquire Mikal Bridges From Nets

Keith Smith
Keith Smith, Resident NBA ExpertJune 26, 2024
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#nba #offseason #trade
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The New York Knicks are all in on building a team that can defend and match the Boston Celtics. The Brooklyn Nets have leaned fully into a rebuild by trading their best player to their crosstown rivals.

We’re also going to breakdown Brooklyn’s trade of future draft picks with the Houston Rockets here too. While these are two separate trades (the Nets-Rockets trade is already official), it’s unlikely that Brooklyn would have made one deal without making the other one.

Trade 1

Here are the particulars:

New York Knicks Acquire
- Mikal Bridges
- 2026 2nd Round Pick

Brooklyn Nets Acquire
- Bojan Bogdanovic
- 2025 NYK 1st Round Pick
- 2025 MIL 1st Round Pick (protected 1-4)
- 2025 2nd Round Pick
- 2027 NYK 1st Round Pick
- 2028 NYK 1st Round Pick Swap
- 2029 NYK 1st Round Pick
- 2031 NYK 1st Round Pick

(Note: We are analyzing this deal as it has been reported. If the trade is adjusted to include additional players or teams, we’ll adjust the analysis.)

New York Knicks

Incoming salary: $23.3 million in 2024-25
Mikal Bridges (SG/SF, two years, $48.2 million)

Outgoing salary: $19.0 million in 2024-25
Bojan Bogdanovic (SF/PF, one year, $19.0 million)

The Knicks are loading up on wings and they went to a team they hadn’t traded with for over 40 years to get it done. Mikal Bridges has long been a target for New York, even before they started loading up on former Villanova players. That they now have four former Wildcat teammates is a fun bonus.

Bridges is a very good all-around player. He’s a terrific wing defender. Bridges can switch onto point guards and smaller fours. He’s got great hands, quick feet and a pretty strong base. Tom Thibodeau will enjoy employing Bridges on all kinds of players, as well as incorporating his ability to switch too.

On offense, Bridges is good, if a tad overrated. Bridges is an excellent third option, a pretty good second option, but miscast as a primary scorer. When he’s asked to be the primary offensive engine, Bridges loses a lot of his efficiency, and the offense tends to stall out. He can make tough shots, but you’d rather see him getting set up for some easier looks.

That’s where the fit with the Knicks is so good. Jalen Brunson is the Knicks best player. He drives the Knicks offense. The playoffs showed that New York needed to get Brunson some offensive help. Relying on him to create everything wore him down by the time the postseason ended.

Bridges can be that player. Whether he’s the secondary creator, or if he falls in line behind Brunson and potentially-retained Julius Randle, Bridges will really help New York. In addition, his own efficiency should rebound, because Bridges will get to play off Brunson, and possibly Randle. That will make his looks that much more open.

The draft pick outlay was massive for New York. That’s where this trade tips towards the Nets, in terms of initial analysis. New York gave up full control of their draft future. Yes, they have a handful of potential swap rights left in the intervening years, but the Knicks sent almost everything they could to Brooklyn.

It’s also worth noting that this trade likely takes the Knicks out of the running for whoever the next star to hit the market is. They may not have the draft capital to get involved in that kind of deal now.

That leaves a simple question: Is Mikal Bridges worth five picks, plus a swap? Is any single player that isn’t a surefire All-NBA talent worth that much?

Probably not.

If Bridges is your third-best player, you probably have a very good team. If he’s your fourth-best player, you probably have a great team. If Bridges is your second-best player, you might be very good if the best player is an every-year MVP candidate, or your depth is overwhelming.

It’s that second spot where the Knicks probably fall. They are going to be able to put five good to great players on the floor at all times next year. There are a handful of injury concerns across the roster, but nothing that is overly concerning (minus figuring out the center position).

Ultimately, New York had to have made this trade knowing they could keep OG Anunoby. He’ll pair with Bridges as one of the league’s best defensive wing duos. Up front, we’ll see what this means for Randle. He could be on the move, as the Knicks look to balance the roster and the cap sheet. Maybe New York will play big, keep Randle and let things sort themselves out later. That seems like an open-ended question at the moment.

At center, this trade signals that the Knicks might know they are losing Isaiah Hartenstein. Fitting in a re-signed Anunoby and Hartenstein under the first apron would be really tricky. That would like necessitate trading Randle without much, if any, salary coming back.

The reason the first apron matters, is that New York will be hard-capped at the first apron under the current trade terms. Because the Knicks are taking back more salary than they are sending out, that will hard-cap them at the first apron. If the terms adjust and the Knicks send out more salary, then they’ll end up hard-capped at the second apron via aggregating salary in a deal. That would give New York about $11 million more in wiggle room to work with. Either way, keeping both of their key free agents is going to be a difficult task, even for one of the best cap management groups in the NBA.

On the court, Mikal Bridges is a terrific fit for the Knicks. On the cap sheet, things get a little tricky. In the draft pick coffers, things are really light for New York. In every meaning of the phrase, the Knicks took the approach of “in for a penny, in for a pound” with this deal.

Brooklyn Nets

Incoming salary: $19.0 million in 2024-25
Bojan Bogdanovic (SF/PF, one year, $19.0 million)

Outgoing salary: $23.3 million in 2024-25
Mikal Bridges (SG/SF, two years, $48.2 million)

The Nets are rebuilding. It’s not an easy choice, but after the roster faltered last season, it’s the correct one. As good as Mikal Bridges is, he’s not a foundational piece to build around.

Now, Brooklyn has an incredible amount of draft capital. They have a bunch of cap flexibility moving forward too. They also probably aren’t done dealing either.

Bojan Bogdanovic is still a nice player, even as he enters his age-35 season. Bogdanovic can still shoot and can still score. How long he’ll stick in his second go-around in Brooklyn is unknown. The Nets can probably flip Bogdanovic and his expiring $19 million contract (it will become fully guaranteed when the trade is completed) to a contender that needs a bench shooter/scorer. That will bring in yet another asset in terms of a young player or a second-round pick or two.

But this trade isn’t about Bogdanovic. Not even a little bit, really.

This trade was about Sean Marks acquiring six new draft picks. He’s got four straight up from the Knicks coming his way. Plus, a Bucks pick that is very likely to convey, plus a future swap. That’s five years of his crosstown rivals’ draft under Nets control. That’s remarkable.

The Nets still have a lot of roster-shuffling to come, but they could hit next offseason with as much as $80-$90 million in cap space. That’s an incredible amount of spending power to use in signings or trades.

It’s also worth noting that Brooklyn is likely to be pretty bad next season. That will impact their own draft pick, which they swung a move to reacquire from the Houston Rockets. Let’s take a look at that deal now!

Trade 2

Here are the particulars:

Brooklyn Nets acquire: Return of BKN 2025 first-round pick swap rights, return of BKN 2026 first-round pick

Houston Rockets acquire: 2025 first-round pick swap rights (lesser of Rockets or Thunder for Suns), 2027 PHX first-round pick, 2029 first-round pick (more favorable of Mavericks and Suns), 2029 first-round pick swap rights (lesser of Mavericks or Suns)

(Note: Since there is no financial component here, we’ll go right to the analysis!)

Brooklyn Nets

It’s a chicken or egg situation, but the Nets don’t make this swap without having the Mikal Bridges trade locked in. They don’t make the Mikal Bridges trade without having this deal locked in. It was both, or neither.

The Nets know they are going to be a bad team in 2024-25 and potentially 2025-26 too. The 2025 NBA Draft projects to be loaded with talent, with Cooper Flagg, Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper leading the way, among several others. Now, the Nets can bottom out with the full assurance that they have control of their own picks over the next two seasons.

Houston Rockets

There are two schools of thinking for the Rockets side of this trade. The far more fun, and potentially fantasyland, theory is that Houston is lining up to trade the Suns some of their picks back in exchange for Kevin Durant or possibly Devin Booker.

Sure…why not? It’s fun to dream a little!

The Suns have already sent some signals that they aren’t interested in anything that involves trading Durant or Booker. But that could change if the Rockets make a strong enough offer. Houston has young talent and, now, the Suns own picks to offer them. The Rockets could also send a veteran two in a deal for Durant. That’s a pretty appealing package for a team that is stuck in second apron hell for the next few years otherwise.

The other side is far less fun, but a lot more practical. Houston has a lot of kids on their roster already. Some of those young players need to get paid soon. By moving off the near-term Nets picks for the long-term Suns picks, the Rockets balance out the cap sheet a bit. As some of the younger players may be moving on, or some of the vets are aging out, Houston will have picks from Phoenix coming in to replenish their roster.

Yes, you can ask “Why would Houston punt at a chance at Cooper Flagg via the Nets pick?”, but that’s not likely how it would have gone down. If Brooklyn couldn’t string these two deals together, they probably don’t make the trade with New York. Instead, the Nets likely try to add talent around Bridges to chase a playoff spot.

So, for Houston, there’s not much lost here, even if they don’t turn these picks into anything else. They actually gained an additional pick and an additional swap. And, as already stated, they balanced things out a bit for their cap sheet long-term.

But if they can turn those Suns picks (plus additional players/picks) into Kevin Durant, then the Houston Rockets will have flipped from rebuild to solid team to contender in the span of three seasons. That’s pretty good work, almost no matter the outcome.

 


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