Brooklyn Nets wings Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson both participated in the 2023 FIBA World Cup this summer as part of Team USA and had varied levels of success on the team due to having different roles. Bridges started every game and averaged 24.2 minutes per game, second-most minutes per game behind Anthony Edwards, while Johnson averaged just 10.9 minutes per contest.
The reason that any of this is being brought up is that after playing their last game of the World Cup on Sep. 10 against Canada, any of the NBA players that played in the tournament will have less than one month to fully recover in time for training camp.
As Ian Begley of SNY points out in his article about how the World Cup could affect the New York Knicks and the Nets, Knicks guard Evan Fournier said that players, speaking from his personal experience, usually hit their first wall of fatigue in December because of how much basketball they played internationally during the summer.
While Nets fans will have to keep in the back of their minds that Bridges and Johnson could hit similar fatigue walls this upcoming season, Kevin Pelton of ESPN noted in his article about how FIBA competition impacts NBA players that those players tend to be better for the following season, most likely because of the additional basketball against formidable competition.
Essentially, Bridges and Johnson should be better than they were last season, but Brooklyn will be relying on players like Nic Claxton and Ben Simmons to step up their play if and when the “Twins” hit the wall in December. Definitely something to watch out for.
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