Anyone who knows and has talked basketball with me recently, also knows that I have had my eye on Mikal Bridges as a Knicks target from the day the Nets traded Kevin Durant for Bridges and a myriad of other assets. Thus, folks will also be unsurprised (if they have not seen it already) when my reaction was fortuitously captured on camera by Andrew Claudio from Knicks Film School:
Despite my proclamations to the contrary, deep-down, I knew the Mikal trade was a pipe-dream. After all, the Knicks and Nets had not traded with each other since Ronald Reagan’s first term in office. Yet, I remained steadfast in my desire for Bridges, which trumped the “rational voice” telling me that it would not get done.
The wanting stemmed from an acknowledgement of both bygone and recent Knicks history. The Knicks, historically, have been championship contenders when they leaned all the way into their defensive identity and focused on bringing in guys who would enhance the chemistry of the team rather than glitzy, shiny ticket stars.
A Trip Down Memory Lane: A historical argument for Bridges.
Consider the Knicks first championship in 1969-70. With all due respect to Clyde Frazier, a deserving NBA Hall of Famer, 7X All-Star, and probably the best player to ever put on a Knicks uniform, one can make the argument that he was one of the worst "best players on a championship team” in NBA history.* Certainly, the Knicks did not have a Bill Russell/Wilt Chamberlain type star on the team. Instead, coach Red Holtzman assembled a team that is considered one of the most unselfish ever, and carried a 92.4 defensive rating, good for best in the league and the second best ever in the modern era. * *
In the 1990s, the Knicks once again became a defensive-oriented team. Upon Pat Riley’s hiring in 1991-1992, the Knicks turned an okay defense (12th in the league in 1990-91) to a great one (2nd in the league). From there, the Knicks finished with the best defensive net rating in the league for three consecutive seasons, and did not finish outside of the top 5 until the dawn of the new millennium in 2000, when they finished 6th. While that era unfortunately ended without a championship, it is widely considered the 2nd most successful in Knicks history, as the Knicks made the playoffs for 11 straight seasons starting in 1991 and appeared in the finals twice.
After 20 years in basketball purgatory, the Knicks finally regained some competency by hiring coach Tom Thibodeau, who happened to be an assistant on those 1990s teams. From the moment he was hired, the man affectionately as Thibs brought immediate stability and instilled a defensive-minded culture. The Knicks, projected to finish with the fewest wins in the league in 2020-2021, ended up at 41-31, good for the 4th seed. They achieved this mark with a defense that improved from 23rd best in the league to 3rd.
Notably, the Knicks compromised their identity the next year, by signing an injured and undersized 4X All-Star in Kemba Walker and replacing defensive-minded but offensively challenged wing Reggie Bullock with dead-eye shooter but defensively challenged Evan Fournier. Neither player clicked with Julius Randle, who went from being one of the best stories in the NBA in 2020-2021 to one of the more maligned players in the NBA. Despite solid late season play, which led to the Knicks maintaining the 11th best D net rating in the NBA, the group finished 37-45 and prompted serious questions about the viability of the team’s long-term plan, which seemed set a year ago.
The Knicks answered some of those inquiries by signing Jalen Brunson, coming off a successful playoff run as the point guard on a Dallas Mavericks team that made the Western Conference finals. Hut the team lagged to a start 9-13 despite Brunson’s solid play. It appeared as if Thibs’ firing was imminent (according to reports, he thought so himself), when he inserted defensive minded Quentin Grimes and Deuce McBride into rotation for the aforementioned Fournier and Derrick Rose, Thibs’ long time favorite point guard who had become a shell of himself on defense. Upon Grimes and McBride’s insertion into the rotation through the end of the regular season, the Knicks proceeded to go on a 54-win pace. Furthermore, from the time they acquired Josh Hart, a defensive-oriented energizer wing who played with Brunson at Villanova, through the end of the season, the Knicks catapulted themselves to a 66-win pace. Ultimately, they finished 47-35 before losing in the second round, which made for a far better season than even any of the most pollyannaish Knicks' fans (except for my Knicks Film School buddies Robert Cross and Mensa Smith), could have hoped for.
However, the next year, the Knicks got off to a slower start, and some of the old concerns had crept in. After center Mitchell Robinson got hurt, the Knicks finished with the 26th ranked defense in the month of December, despite Isaiah Hartenstein’s stellar play. Fit concerns began to creep in, as multiple players, including Grimes and Hart, vocally conveyed their confusion related to their roles. RJ Barrett had never fit well next to Julius Randle (as I have written about before) and Immanuel Quickley was on the final year of his contract after failing to reach an agreement with the Knicks in the offseason. In the final two games they played together in New York, Barrett stunk up the joint yet received more playing time than IQ. When asked about this discrepancy, Thibs cited “size”, which KFS dean Jonathan Macri noted might be a message to the front office that the Knicks needed a wing. Then, on the morning of December 30th, 2023, with the Knicks holding a disappointing 17-15 record, the Knicks traded Barrett, Quickley and a second round pick for OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa, and Malachi Flynn. Anunoby, a plug and play wing that had made an All-NBA defensive team the year prior, fit in like a glove. The Knicks would go 11-1, when he, Brunson, and Randle, who came back from his disastrous 2022 season to make 2 more NBA All-Star teams and earn an All-NBA team selection, shared the court together in January. Although OG was hurt for much of his time in NY, the Knicks went 26-5 (including playoffs) with him on the court, and with Brunson’s ascendance to superstardom, the Knicks went 50-32, good for the second-best record in the Eastern Conference. Had OG been healthy for the final 5 games in their second round series against the Indiana Pacers, they likely would not only have beaten Indiana but potentially put a scare in the eventual champion Boston Celtics.
The Bridge to the Past
On June 26, 2024, Mikal Bridges was traded from the Nets to the Knicks for 5 first round picks, an unprecedented haul for Brooklyn. The Nets were able to hang their heads high, trading a disgruntled player who was not working as a first option for said unprecedented haul, while then turning the picks they owned from the Phoenix Suns into full control over their future pick capital in a trade with the Houston Rockets. Yet, while it was a great trade for Brooklyn and seemingly an overpay for Bridges (I will cover that in the 2nd part of this article), I posit that it represented something different, something almost unquantifiable for the crosstown Knicks.
The Los Angeles Lakers historically win with glitz and glamour, predicated on their ability to draw stars to Los Angeles. From Kobe to Shaq to Magic to Lebron to Kareem, LA seems to be at their best when the most notorious players in the world are shining their light the brightest. Whether it was Magic’s dazzling display of passing and smile that lit up Los Angeles, Kobe’s knack for coming up in the moment, or Kareem’s skyhook landing ever so gently in the hoop, the Lakers have relied upon some of the greatest NBA players ever to propel them to their 17 championships, good for 2nd best in NBA history. What about a team like the Golden State Warriors? It seems they have success when they play an up-tempo style, with great shooting around them. From the 70s teams led by Rick Barry, to Run-TMC with a high octane led by Chris Mullin, Mitch Redmond and Tim Hardaway in the 90s, the “We Believe” Warriors who played at a breakneck pace in 2007, and then finally, the most successful iteration, the 2010s-2020s “Splash Brothers” Warriors that not only won 4 titles but changed the sport in the process. All of those teams were offensive-minded, relied on shooting, and played at fast paces for the era. Switching sports (sorry to any exclusively basketball-minded reader), how about my beloved New York Mets? They’ve done best when the team has been led by stud pitching from their 1969 World Series win (Tom Seaver) to 1986 (Doc Gooden) to their 2015 World Series appearance (The big 5 of Jacob Degrom, Noah Syndergaard, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz, and “Big Sexy” Bartolo Colon). One can maybe chalk all of this up to happenstance, but I think there is more there. Generally, when teams rely on things that have made past iterations of their teams great, they have the benefit of institutional knowledge, whether from past players or coaches, that can provide a roadmap to what the current iteration of the team needs to do to reach the heights it had previously reached.
With the Mikal deal, the Knicks are leaning all the way into their franchise identity. Defense is set to be the hallmark of the team, with Mitchell Robinson/Hart/Anunoby/Bridges/McBride/Donte Divincenzo all considered plus defenders. Fit was clearly a key concern for Rose, considering not only Mikal’s versatility as a player but also his college success with Brunson/Hart/Divincenzo, which resulted in two championships. Call it a coincidence, but I’m not sure it is: the Knicks have been best positioned when they have teams that are defensive minded and unselfish. The last 25 years of Knicks basketball were replete with chases for stars that never were going to come or, in Carmelo Anthony’s case, front offices that failed to provide adequate complimentary pieces to go along when a star did arrive. After witnessing recent success when they leaned into their defensive identity/options that fit over more appealing options, Leon Rose and the Knicks front office decided to go all in on that culture and legacy of defense, toughness, and chemistry. I, for one, could not be more excited.
Looking forward to writing part 2, where I rebut 3 prominent objections from folks who are skeptical that the Mikal Bridges trade will make the Knicks better.
*Absolutely no shade on Clyde, who is up against some STEEP competition in that regard.
**If you start the modern era in 1970. Arbitrary, I know, but the Knicks defense was really, really good.
Great work, Kevin. I was surprised RWC name wasn’t hyperlinked to one of his tweets that said something about #53Wins