Mikal Bridges is a good player who got the Nets a great return. Now Brooklyn has to make that return a rebuild.
The Nets pried five first-round picks and a first-round swap out of the Knicks for Bridges, who has never made an All-Star game. But that trade — along with a separate deal to regain control of their own 2025 and ’26 picks in loaded drafts — was a statement of intent. Intent to tank.
The former deal ensures they’ll lose for at least a season or two; the latter ensures they’ll benefit from those ugly losses.
Nets owner Joe Tsai and GM Sean Marks have picked a lane: a total rebuild, tanking for Cooper Flagg or another high-end prospect in what’s projected to be a fantastic draft.
After straddling the lane and trying to slow-build around Bridges, they couldn’t acquire an All-Star running mate for him. They never engaged on Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell isn’t coming, and Giannis Antetokoumpo was a pipe dream.
Tsai decided he didn’t want to be stuck in limbo anymore. But now his Nets are bound for a hellish descent that would scare Dante.
Bridges had seemed disenchanted in Brooklyn, and when the Nets spoke to teams about him, league personnel told The Post their demands were “excessive.” They quoted one team a price of six first-rounders, according to ESPN. They damn near got that package.
For months, sources have told The Post that Bridges specifically wanted a Villanova reunion in the Garden. With signability not a problem, Bridges was more valuable to the Knicks than to other contenders.
But Marks and Tsai were determined to force the Knicks to blow every other offer out of the water. That’s exactly what happened.
The Knicks gave up five first-round picks — their own unprotected selections in 2025, 2027, 2029 and 2031, along with a protected 2025 first-rounder from Milwaukee. That’s one more first-rounder than the Nets got for Kevin Durant, and they can generate a $21.7 million trade exception, per cap expert Yossi Gozlan.
The Nets already have a trove of 16 first-rounders, and could also move Dorian Finney-Smith or Cam Johnson, with Cleveland.com reporting the Cavs (who had the 20th pick Wednesday) “love” Johnson and “will be involved” if he’s available.
But many of these picks figure to be low. The star talent needed for this rebuild to work is going to need to come more from the Nets’ stockpile of cap space next summer and their own picks over the next two drafts.
With Ben Simmons, Dennis Schroder and Bojan Bogdanovic all on expiring contracts, the Nets could conceivably have as much as $100 million in cap space in 2025.
But extending Cam Thomas could eat up about $20 million of that, and how does this impact their plans for Nic Claxton? Does he still want to stay? Do they send him out in a sign-and-trade, with New Orleans interested?
And while it’s been 41 years since the rival Nets and Knicks dealt — Ronald Reagan was in office and “Thriller” was topping the charts — these next two years could feel that long in Brooklyn. The Nets went 32-50 last season with flagging TV ratings on YES, but these next few campaigns promise to be far uglier.
They’re actually banking on it.
The bet isn’t without risk. Just ask Detroit as it fell from first to fifth and watched the Hawks win the lottery with just a 3 percent chance.
And the Nets themselves went 12-70 in 2010 and assumed they’d win the lottery for John Wall, but assumed too soon. And they had a 25 percent chance of winning then. Even if they struggle to the league’s worst record next season, they still have just a 14 percent chance to win the lottery.
But that draft will be more than just Flagg. There’s the Rutgers duo of Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, French phenom Nolan Traore, and AJ Dybantsa and Cameron Boozer the next year.
The Nets have picked a lane … or failing to land an All-Star picked it for them.
And that lane is a tank job. Buckle up because it’ll be ugly.
