Knicks fans were mostly ecstatic. Nets fans were disappointed but understood.
The blockbuster trade that sent Mikal Bridges from Brooklyn to Broadway for five first-round draft picks, a second-rounder and a first-round pick swap felt like a seismic move that said a lot about the directions the two franchises were headed.
The Knicks were going for it. The Nets were rebuilding again.
On Friday night, the two meet for the first time since the dramatic deal.
“I think it’ll be good to see my guys,” Bridges said of the reunion at MSG. “I have a lot of good friends over there, even the coaching staff that’s there, all the way up to [general manager] Sean Marks and [assistant general manager] Andy [Birdsong]. I’m real close with a lot of those guys, so it will be good to see them.”
So far, the trade hasn’t worked out as most imagined it would, at least not yet.
The Knicks are off to a slow start at 5-6, a new team still trying to find an identity amid extremely high expectations.
The Nets are only one game in the loss column behind them, outperforming the low bar experts set for them by a wide margin under new head coach Jordi Fernandez.
Bridges is symbolic of the Knicks’ inconsistent start.
He hasn’t been a flop, but he also has yet to establish himself.
His 15.6 scoring average would be his lowest since the 2021-22 campaign with the Suns.
He’s shooting just 30.4 percent from 3-point range on 6.3 attempts.
His rebounding (3.8) is down, and he has a minus-0.6 NET rating, meaning the Knicks are being outscored by 0.6 points per 100 possessions with Bridges on the floor.
Of course, it’s only 11 games. The Knicks as a whole are still searching for the right mix, and they have dealt with injuries to key reserves Precious Achiuwa and Cam Payne, along with the season-long absence of center Mitchell Robinson.
Furthermore, coach Tom Thibodeau’s Knicks teams have always started slow.
Last year’s group was 17-15 through 32 games. The year before, they were 12-13 through 25 games.
The Knicks enter the matchup coming off a frustrating one-point loss at home to the Bulls that saw them rally from a 22-point deficit.
But they fell short when Josh Hart fouled Colby White from 3-point range, White hit all three free throws with 3 seconds left and Jalen Brunson’s jumper at the buzzer was halfway down and popped out.
It marked the team’s fourth loss in six games. Afterward, though, they felt there were a lot of positives in the setback.
What’s happening on and off the Garden court
Sign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.
Thank you
“Just proving to us in this locker room that we don’t stop fighting,” Brunson said. “That’s a takeaway we can take from this game. Obviously, the way it turned out was not the way we wanted, but there were a lot of positives. You can’t look at the negatives consistently. You can learn from stuff. You have to see what we can work on and go from there.”
The NBA released the last two minute report on the Knicks-Bulls game and said the foul call on Hart in the final seconds was accurate.
In addition to saying that he had a hand on White’s back, the league also said that he made illegal contact with the back of White’s head on the play. …
Karl-Anthony Towns (left knee contusion) was added to the injury report. He is questionable, as are Payne (left hamstring) and Miles McBride (left knee inflammation). Brunson (sprained right ankle) is probable. Achiuwa (left hamstring strain) remains out.
