The Brooklyn Nets finally made the move to send them into a full rebuild by trading wing Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks late on Tuesday night. While there had been plenty of reporting suggesting that Brooklyn wanted to hold on to Bridges, they may have just been delaying the inevitable.
Jake Fischer of Yahoo! Sports wrote on Wednesday that the Nets were always aware of Bridges’ interest in joining the Knicks, something that Nets fans do not want to hear after watching him play for their franchise for the past 1.5 seasons. There was already a significant amount of the fanbase who believed that Bridges wanted to be with his former Villanova teammates anyway.
“The Knicks, sources said, upped the ante Tuesday with a significant offer that Brooklyn simply could not refuse, marking the first time these two neighboring franchises have struck a deal since 1983,” Fischer wrote.
To recap, the Nets traded Bridges along with a 2026 second-round pick in exchange for forward Bojan Bogdanovic, four unprotected first-round picks (2025, 2027, 2029, 2031), one top-four protected 2025 first-round pick via the Milwaukee Bucks, an unprotected pick swap in 2028, and a second-round pick in 2025.
One of the main talking points within the Nets community was if Bridges would be more valuable as a trade piece for Brooklyn as opposed to staying on the roster in the event that the Nets were able to bring in a star somehow. Based on various reports, Brooklyn did what it could to hold on to Bridges, but with the offer that the Knicks made, the Nets can start over with arguably the best stable of draft capital in the NBA.
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