The Mikal Bridges Trade Lifts Knicks to Contender Status, Plunges Nets Into Tank Mode
The Brooklyn Nets dealt Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks for five first round draft picks plus a second round draft pick and a first round pick swap; three of the first round picks and the first round pick swap are in 2027 or later, indicating that the Nets are planning to try the trendy--but thus far unsuccessful--plan of "tanking to the top." Tanking does not work, as Philadelphia 76ers fans have seen for the past decade. In contrast to the Nets giving up proven talent while hoping that unproven talent acquired years from now will help the team win, the Knicks are trying to win now, as Bridges joins three of his teammates from Villanova's 2016 NCAA championship team: Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Donte DiVincenzo.
Bridges has never missed a game during his NBA career. In the 2022-23 season he played in 83 regular season games, appearing in 56 games with Phoenix before being traded to Brooklyn, for whom he played in 27 games. Bridges averaged a career-high 20.1 ppg that season, and he averaged 19.6 ppg in 2023-24. He shot at least .510 from the field during each of his last three full seasons with the Suns, but his field goal percentage dropped significantly as he assumed a larger offensive role with the Nets (.475 in 2022-23, .436 in 2023-24). He is not a great rebounder or passer but he is an excellent defensive player, earning a selection to the All-Defensive First Team in 2022, when he also finished second to Marcus Smart in the Defensive Player of the Year voting. Bridges is an above average three point shooter (.375 3FG% for his career).
Last season, the undersized but scrappy Knicks overcame a host of injuries to rank second in points allowed and fifth in rebounding while finishing second in the Eastern Conference with a 50-32 record. The Knicks defeated the Philadelphia 76ers 4-2 in the first round before losing 4-3 to the Indiana Pacers. Bridges' superior defense and his three point shooting could have made a difference versus the Pacers, and could also be valuable in a playoff series versus the NBA champion Boston Celtics.
Two players have won two NBA titles in the past five years: Jrue Holiday (Milwaukee Bucks 2021, Boston Celtics 2024) and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (L.A. Lakers 2020, Denver Nuggets 2023). Holiday and Caldwell-Pope are athletic perimeter players who can guard multiple positions and shoot three pointers efficiently. Bridges fits that mold.
A prevailing NBA narrative suggests that first round draft picks are worth their weight in gold. That is why "stat gurus" and media members mocked the Minnesota Timberwolves for giving up four first round draft picks plus other assets to Utah in exchange for Rudy Gobert in 2022--but after making that deal the Jazz missed the playoffs the past two seasons and are sliding backwards in the standings; in contrast, Gobert anchored a Minnesota defense that led the league in points allowed and defensive field goal percentage in 2023-24 en route to the Timberwolves advancing to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2004. Maybe the Jazz will pan for gold someday with the first round draft picks that they obtained, but it is worth noting that even owning the number one overall draft pick provides no guarantee of striking it rich: the last number one overall draft pick who won an NBA title with the team that drafted him is Kyrie Irving (selected first in the 2011 NBA Draft), and he only enjoyed that success after LeBron James returned to Cleveland. Other number one overall draft picks since 2000 include Kwame Brown, Andrea Bargnani, Greg Oden, John Wall, Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins, Ben Simmons, Markelle Fultz, and Deandre Ayton; put all of those players on the same team in their respective primes and you still do not have a championship contending team!
Teams that have superior scouting departments and excellent player development programs find and develop winning players much more consistently than teams that hoard first round draft picks without having a coherent plan for how to build a superior roster--not to mention the fact that the NBA is in the entertainment business and charges premium rates for tickets and for broadcast rights, which in turn means that the league and its teams have an obligation to the paying customers to put the best possible product on the floor. The Nets, like the Jazz and other teams that have given up proven players to obtain draft picks, will not likely be putting an attractive product on the floor next season.
Labels: Brooklyn Nets, Mikal Bridges, New York Knicks, tanking
posted by David Friedman @ 3:02 PM
12 Comments:
Marcel
The Knicks arent contenders they don't have a number 1 or 2 option on a title team on there team
If the nets get cooper flagg this whole article won't make sense
We seen what tanking got the spurs, Cleveland and other teams over the years
And tanking made the sixers a second round team
So it can work I. The right year with right player
Marcel:
The Knicks finished with the second best record in the East and reached the Eastern Conference Finals without Julius Randle and prior to acquiring Bridges. When do you predict that the Nets will exceed those two accomplishments?
There is no guarantee (1) that the Nets will draft Flagg and (2) that Flagg will be a franchise player. I will spare you the long list of "can't miss" prospects who missed.
The Spurs tanked to get Wembanyama and they still stink, so you are right that we see what tanking did for them. The Cavaliers did not get anywhere by tanking; they won their only title when LeBron James rejoined the team and built a super-team with Irving and Love. You can't name "other teams" that benefited from tanking because--as documented in the "Atlantic" article that I cited here and in other 20 Second Timeout articles, it is proven that tanking has never worked.
Are you really impressed that after years of losing on purpose the 76ers are a second round team?
Marcel
The Knicks will never win anything
U got to have a top 75 level player or 2 top tier 2 options
(Brown Tatum)
Jalen brunson isn't good enough
The Spurs tank for Duncan
5 rings
Cavs tank for lebron
1 ring
Wemby will win titles and be the best player in NBA for a decade.
Joell embid been mvp and kept the sixers around the second round a decade
Cooper Flagg will pan out if nets tank he will make them Relevant
Tanking can work if the right star comes along
Marcel:
You avoided answering my question about the Nets.
I did not pick the Knicks to win the championship; I said that they are a contender, which was true even before they acquired Bridges.
David Robinson missed the first 18 games of the 1996-97 season with a back injury, and then suffered a season-ending foot injury just six games after he came back. If the Spurs were tanking that season, then why did they fire Coach Bob Hill after a 3-15 start sans Robinson?
The Cavs were bad for several years before drafting LeBron James, and not because they were tanking. They won two of their final three games the year before drafting James at a time when losing those games would have clinched the league's worst record. Also, the Cavs did not win after drafting James; they won after signing James as a free agent and then building a super team with James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love.
No one knows how good Flagg will be, or if he will avoid the injuries that have been the downfall of many top draft picks. Even if the Nets have the worst record, it is still more likely that they will not get the number one overall pick.
Please read the Atlantic article that I cited, which noted decades of evidence that tanking does not work.
Marcel
Brooklyn being better than my will depend on flagg and how fast he dominates and if they get him
David Robinson was held out on purpose in 96-97 spurs people admitted they tanked
Cavs traded away a lot of good players to tank for James
Tanking works if u get the right star
LeBron Duncan embid etc
Marcel:
In other words, you admit that Brooklyn being better than NY depends on luck--both in terms of obtaining the number one overall pick (which is not a certainty even if Brooklyn has the league's worst record) and in terms of the number one overall pick becoming a superstar. Thus, you concede my point that the Nets traded a proven player (Bridges) in exchange for hoping for good luck.
Robinson had back surgery before the season--forcing him to miss the first 18 games, during which the Spurs went 3-15--and then after he returned he suffered a season-ending broken foot. If the Spurs were tanking then why did Popovich fire Coach Bob Hill--who was losing a lot of games--and take over as the coach to guide the Spurs to a better record down the stretch? If Popovich was tanking then he would have let Hill have all of the losses on his resume.
The Cavs example is not quite so clear cut, but the reality is that the Cavs had been unintentionally bad for several years before drafting James. Also, and more to the point of this discussion, the Cavs did not win a title after drafting James. James left Cleveland, won two titles in Miami, and then returned to Cleveland as a free agent. So, even if the Cavs tanked to draft James that did not lead to the Cavs winning a title.
I don't know why you mentioned Embiid. Philadelphia fans endured years of tanking for the "privilege" of watching Embiid never lead the 76ers past the second round. That is hardly a tanking success story.
Observer asking a clarifying question here:
Did the Spurs fire Hill before or after Robinson was reinjured? If he was fired before the reinjury isn't the most likely explanation that they were planning to try and compete with Robinson back then decided to tank once he went down for the season and Hill was already gone? On the other hand if he was fired after the reinjury then yes that seems counterproductive to tanking.
Anonymous:
The Spurs fired Hill after starting 3-15 without the injured Robinson. The Spurs then went 3-3 after Robinson's return before Robinson suffered a season-ending broken foot. If the Spurs were tanking then (1) they would not have fired a coach who had a 3-15 record and (2) they would not have brought Robinson back at all. Also, if the Spurs were tanking to have the best opportunity to obtain the number one overall draft pick then they did a lousy job, because they only had the third worst record that season; the league-worst Grizzlies were an expansion team ruled to be ineligible for the Draft Lottery, but the Boston Celtics had the best chance to win the Tim Duncan sweepstakes. It was luck, not tanking and not some kind of great master plan, that resulted in the Spurs getting Duncan instead of the Celtics getting Duncan.
Also, if the Spurs had not drafted smartly in later years and also had a great player development program in place then at most they would have won one title with Duncan and Robinson, not five titles in the Duncan era after surrounding Duncan with great non-Lottery draft picks such as Ginobili, Parker, Leonard (who they acquired in a trade but was not a Lottery pick), etc.
Sorry I was unclear. I wasn't suggesting they were planning to tank prior to Robinson coming back but that they decided to tank once he had his second injury and the season was likely lost anyway.
Was there any tanking before the famous 1984 draft? I heard that was part of the impetus for the lottery system.
Diff Anon
Seems pretty clear that tanking for a single season to get a foundational star can occasionally work so long as it does not become your sustained culture. Philly tried to tank for multiple years to try and get multiple stars and it became a culture of losing which infected Embiid, Simmons, and others. Embiid has an excuse-making, can-kicking mentality and it is hard not to believe "The Process" contributed to that. It is also probably why the hyper-competitive Jimmy Butler was both probably what that team needed and an awkward fit while he was there.
Spurs tanking for Duncan (and come on, they absolutely did. The whole team had pretty coincidental/dubious long term injuries once Admiral went down) worked because they did not create a culture of losing and immediately focused on winning once they got their star. It was a tank of opportunity in a season where even if they tried they probably only would have won 35 or 40 games instead of 20, not a premeditated tank of trying to game the system over a period of years. That Boston tanked even worse does not mean they didn't also tank.
Houston and Chicago tanking in 84 worked because they got foundational stars and immediately started trying to win. Houston had some bad luck that delayed their ability to do so but even after Sampson fell apart they generally tried to win and were rarely out of the playoffs. It didn't work for Portland because you still have to draft well/lucky and Bowie's knees went and he probably wasn't going to be that guy anyway.
But modern tanking has a different philosophy. They try to tank for a whole roster, not a single star, and it creates bad habits, bad morale, bad culture. Philly won't win with Embiid, as a franchise they have the soul of losers and an institutionalized belief in kicking the can down the road.
We will see this season which the Spurs are doing. They did not really look like a tanking team to me last year as much as a team dealing with the hangover of tanking the season before. Meaning they had a barren roster around Wemby. If they tank this year they risk turning Wemby into the next Embiid but I anticipate they'll actually try to compete and will at least flirt with the play-in.
There is also a distinction between front office tanking and coaching tanking. A team can tank with a coach that is trying to win every game if the front office deliberately sabotages the roster enough. "Tanking" has many different levels and varietals and not all tankjobs are created equal.
All tanking is bad and it fails far more often than it succeeds but to suggest it has NEVER worked requires a pretty selective memory.
Anonymous:
There is no evidence that the Spurs decided to tank, and I noted above the evidence that they did not tank. During his prime, Robinson was worth 25-30 wins over the course of a season, so his season-ending injury meant that the Spurs would not be good.
Diff Anon:
The Atlantic article that I cited in this article documents that tanking never works.
I agree with you that there are degrees/variations to tanking, and I also agree with you that the institutionalized tanking over several seasons done by the 76ers is the worst kind.
The Spurs tanked to get Wembanyama, and as a result he is surrounded by losing players with a losing culture. It will be interesting to see his career arc, but the Spurs have a lot of work to do to rebuild their culture and their roster. Other than the deliberately tanking teams, every team at least flirts with making the Play-In, so if that is the best that the Spurs can do in Wembanayama's second season that just reinforces my point about tanking not working.
Tanking made more sense before the Draft Lottery, because the team with the worst record would get the number one overall pick or at least be in a 50/50 coin flip for that pick. I hated tanking then just because it violates the spirit of competition and creates an unwatchable product, but tanking was at least somewhat logical at that time--which is why the NBA instituted the Draft Lottery to get rid of the incentive to tank. Unfortunately for NBA fans, the "stat gurus" are not very good at math or team-building, so they still believe that tanking works.
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