According to a recent report from Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, the Houston Rockets allegedly offered Brooklyn several of their own 1st round picks from the original James Harden trade in exchange for Mikal Bridges. However, Brooklyn refused to even entertain trading Mikal Bridges, deeming him untouchable. According to reporters such as Adrian Wojnarowski, Shams Charania, & Brian Lewis, the Brooklyn Nets have no interest in trading Mikal Bridges, instead opting to build around the 27 year old in hopes of building a contender.
While it made a great deal of sense as to why the Nets did not want to rebuild since Houston owns their 2024, 2025 (swap), 2026, & 2027 (swap) 1st round picks unprotected, the Nets have been abysmal this season, with little to no hope of improving. Less than a week before the trade deadline, the Nets are currently 20-29, the record due to a combination of poor play and coaching. If the Rockets are willing to give back the Nets some of their 1sts, they must take it!
In order for the Nets to improve, they need to trade for a star, however as Nets fans know, it will cost 4-5 unprotected 1sts in addition to several key role players, and that assumes any star wants to come to Brooklyn despite the team’s awful performance. At this point, the Nets need to accept that the team is bad and rebuild, trade Bridges back to Houston, trade everyone over the age of 26 and jumpstart your rebuild with a treasure chest of assets. History has proven that in order to win a championship, you must have multiple homegrown cost controlled stars that the team has control over for nearly a decade due to restricted free agency.
Fans that do not want to rebuild are denying history, the New York Knicks have been hoping that the NY market would attract stars to their team despite being poorly managed, and it has failed. Hoping superstars will come to a bad team because the market has historically failed, superstars do not want to go to bad teams, they want to go to competent teams. Fans will also argue that Mikal Bridges will attract stars, however this is false. It is a terrible team building strategy to assume superstar players will prioritize personal relationships over winning championships. The Nets have shown interest in Donovan Mitchell, however it is dangerous to assume that Donovan Mitchell would leave a top 3 seed in order to go to an 11th seed because he’s friendly with a player.
Fans that don’t want to rebuild and draft are fundamentally wrong, that mentality is why the Nets have been bad and will always be bad if the Nets continue to disrespect the draft. Majority of MVPs/Superstars were drafted, this notion that the risk of relying on the draft and developing talent is too great that we'd rather keep Bridges and stay a play-in team at best is ludicrous.
Superstars once proven cost an ungodly amount of assets to get, if we want to get a top 10 player such as Luka, Embiid, or Giannis, it's going to cost us 4-5 1st rounders and high quality role players. Once we get them (which is a very unlikely assumption) we would have nothing to build around them. The rebuild route has proven to yield good results, majority of champions have a drafted star on their team (either as their 1st or 2nd option). During the Sean Marks era, the Nets have done a fantastic job at drafting, Allen at 22nd, Levert at 20th, Thomas at 27th, Sharpe at 29th, & Claxton at 31st. Teams that know how to draft can rebuild their teams in a matter of 2-3 years, OKC and Orlando are the most recent examples of this. Even if we trade Bridges, the Nets would still be able to build around Cam Thomas, who has shown star potential this season, averaging 20 points in less than 30 minutes per game
Fans don’t want to admit it, but it is naive to always be selling draft picks for the sake of short term success despite the long term consequences. Teams have to take their medicine and a rebuild is inevitable, the Nets have two choices. Force themselves to contend and end up with nothing, or rebuild and have a future.
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