Mikal Bridges Trade evalution and what it means for the Nets going foward

Late night on June 25th, Adrian Wojnarowski announced that Mikal Bridges would be going to the New York Knicks in a trade that would bring 4 first-round picks, 1 protected pick, 1 swap, forward Bojan Bogdanovic, Shake Milton, and Mamadi Diakite. The Nets would add Keita Bates-Diop and a 2nd round pick to the Knicks.

What this means for the Nets is that they are going for a full rebuild. They traded the Suns' picks to the Rockets to regain their own 2026 and 2025 first-rounders. Sean Marks took control and now has full control of their own picks, plus the one from the Bridges trade, which meant that they chose a direction to go into a full rebuild.

The Nets were stuck after trading Durant and Irving, as they moved on from that era. After Bridges averaged 25 points in the last 2 months of the 2022-2023 season, the Nets were eliminated in 5 games against the Sixers. In the off-season, the Nets were in contention to acquire superstar Damian Lillard from the Portland Trail Blazers, to pair with Mikal. As the Nets were looking for their next direction in the franchise. In the end, Lillard was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Nets just ended up signing some veterans Lonnie Walker and young wing Trent Watford.

Going into the 2022-2023 season, the Nets' expectations were to be a play-in team with a fully healthy Ben Simmons and the duo of Bridges and Johnson, along with the defensive stud Nicholas Claxton. However, injuries to Simmons and poor play from Bridges and Cam Johnson led the Nets to a 32-50 record. The biggest positive was Cam Thomas' improvement in a starting role as he averaged 22.5 PPG. He showed that he was able to be the Nets' first option as a scorer and a viable option for the Nets' future as they decided to undergo a full rebuild.

In the end, even after Sean Marks told the media that they were looking to add Mikal Bridges, they decided to trade Mikal to the Knicks to reunite him with his Villanova teammates. They chose Cam Thomas as their guy for the rebuild as they got their own picks back to tank for the 2025 NBA Draft and try to get the young uprising star guard from Duke - Cooper Flagg. They also traded their veterans with big contracts to get ready for the 2025 free agency.

Sean Marks and the Nets chose a direction, one they needed after the KD/Kyrie saga, and now will try to build their own championship team in an era where teams have developed their players through the draft, like the OKC Thunder and Boston Celtics.