Nets trade Mikal Bridges to Knicks

The Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks agreed to a trade that will send former All-Defense member and 20-point scorer Mikal Bridges across the East River, league sources confirmed to The Athletic on Tuesday.

The Knicks will send a package that includes Bojan Bogdanović, four unprotected first-round picks, a 2025 protected first-rounder that belongs to the Milwaukee Bucks, a 2028 first-round pick swap and a 2026 second-round pick, sources confirmed to The Athletic. ESPN was first to report the news.

In return, New York finally lands the previously faceless star it’s prepared for since the current administration took over in 2020.

Bridges will join a group that has championship ambitions, one that finished this past season with 50 wins, a No. 2 seed and a playoff run that ended one victory short of the Eastern Conference finals. Not only that, he will reconnect Jalen Brunson, Donte DiVincenzo and Josh Hart as the fourth member of ‘Nova Knicks,’ the quartet of former Villanova stars that has made its way to Madison Square Garden.

When team president Leon Rose took over the Knicks four years ago, this was the goal: Hold onto the franchise’s first-round picks, acquire ones from other teams and stockpile tradeable contracts all while improving year over year. Trading for Bridges is the final result.

He will slide into a starting lineup that is uncertain for next season. The Knicks reigning first unit included Brunson, DiVincenzo, OG Anunoby, Julius Randle and Isaiah Hartensten — but Hartenstein and Anunoby will both become unrestricted free agents on June 30. For now, their futures are uncertain.

Others are locked up on the Knicks, too.

Hart and Miles McBride begin the first seasons of three-year contract extensions in 2024-25. Mitchell Robinson has a couple of years remaining on his deal, as does Bridges, who the Knicks will pay $23.3 million this season and $24.9 million in the one after that.

Bridges adds a two-way presence to a two-way team.

He was a deserving All-Defense member in 2022 when he was a highly efficient role player who helped the Phoenix Suns to 64 wins. He developed as an individual scorer in Brooklyn, where he carried a heavier burden after arriving as a centerpiece of the Kevin Durant trade.

With the Knicks, his role projects to be somewhere between the spot-up shooter and cutter he was in Phoenix and the first option he became on the other side of the bridge.

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Brunson is coming off a season during which he finished fourth in the league in scoring and sixth in MVP voting. Randle is a two-time All-NBA player. Anunoby, if he returns, will take up shots, though he’s hardly a ball-dominant player. He and Bridges would make up one of the NBA’s scariest defensive wing combinations.

Bridges averaged 19.6 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.6 assists on 44-37-81 shooting this past season in Brooklyn.

For the Nets, the deal represents a change in direction. They had swatted away offers for Bridges ever since acquiring him. Following a 50-loss season, they turn to a rebuild that includes a haul of draft picks.

The four unprotected first-rounders the Knicks owe the Nets are in 2025, 2027, 2029 and 2031. Brooklyn also owns three unprotected first-round selections belonging to the Phoenix Suns, another belonging to the Dallas Mavericks, a protected 2027 one from the Philadelphia 76ers and a 2028 first-round swap with the Suns.

The Bridges trade snaps a 41-year streak. The Knicks and Nets last made a trade with one another in 1983.

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(Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)