The Brooklyn Nets are in the midst of an offseason in which they are hoping to make enough moves to get back to the playoffs next season. Since it is early in the summer, there is plenty of discussion over how Brooklyn should move forward, including a player in the middle of much trade speculation.
“The selling point is [to] play with Mikal Bridges. That dude is beloved by everybody — everybody — in the NBA,” former Philadelphia 76ers scout Michael VandeGarde said to Brian Lewis of the New York Post recently. Some within the Nets fanbase believes that hoping that Bridges will be able to entice any star players to come to Brooklyn is not worth waiting to see.
“He reminds me a lot of [Andre] Iguodala. He’s better than Iguodala,” VandeGarde said of Bridges. “[Iguodala] was good for the 76ers, and averaged over 20 a game. Everybody’s ‘oh he has to replace AI,’ but that’s not what he was. He was 17-, 18-points-a-game, play fast, be an elite-level defender.”
Bridges is in an interesting position within Brooklyn’s organization as he has was put into a spot to be the team’s primary scoring option with mixed results. When Bridges came to the Nets in the 2022-23 season as a result of the Kevin Durant trade, he averaged 26.1 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.7 assists, and 1.0 steals per game while shooting 47.5% from the field and 37.6% from three-point land.
However, during the 2023-24 season, Bridges did not build on that performance as he averaged 19.6 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 1.0 steals per game while shooting 43.6% from the floor and 37.2% from deep. Whether or not Bridges is meant to be in Brooklyn for the next era of the franchise remains to be seen, but there are some league personnel who knows how much Bridges could mean towards player recruitment.
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