TRADE GRADES: Nets come away with a glowing report card ... for now (2024)

Always at counterpoint with the optimists, Steve Lichtenstein now has his own substack and Twitter account, both of which he often puts to good use, asking the tough questions, bellowing his opinion.

So, while many Brooklyn Nets fans were rejoicing that their team finally had “direction” after dealing Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks, joining most experts, Lichtenstein took to social media Thursday to offer a little (no, a lot of) skepticism about said “direction,” suggesting the Nets didn’t need to schedule a season or more of inglorious tanking. Indeed, skepticism is good when everyone else seems enthralled, ecstatic in sync. That’s the case here.

While fans and NBA experts were united in their reverie, the former WFAN columnist warned the media and the fanbase do not share the same vantage point. Experts, aka pundits, look at things dispassionately from 30,000 feet while the fans are down in the mud, suffering...

The experts won’t be around for the losing streak, he argues. Fans will be be sitting through the losing streaks, the warm-up jackets tossed into the stands, the players curses just off-mic, questions from their kids about why the Nets can’t win.

But as noted, Lichtenstein is a lone voice in whatever wilderness is left in the debate over how the Nets should move forward. The fans and experts believe Tuesday was a golden day in the history of the Nets. Indeed, the trade — Bridges for five firsts, a swap of firsts and a second rounder — the is universally viewed as best possible circ*mstances, that being the debris field left over from the trades of the Big Three in 2022 and 2023.

So enjoy the uncustomary unanimity but remember as well, the NBA is not a scripted drama. More like barely controlled, unpredictable chaos. We’ve been down this road before, gotten A’s and A+’s before. How’d that work out? That said, here ya go.

Kevin Pelton, ESPN: (A+)

The dean of trade graders, Pelton writes there is now a “path” to greatness for Brooklyn that didn’t exist before the deal was done.

Bridges’ combination of production and contract makes him invaluable to contending teams. Unfortunately, his current team was no longer one. The Nets could have hoped going into last season that versatility could compensate for lacking shot creation and elite shooting. A 32-50 finish, which resulted in Brooklyn sending the No. 3 pick in Wednesday’s draft to the Houston Rockets via the Harden trade, suggested that optimism was hopeful at best.

Confronting reality made it clear the Nets had to take this kind of package for Bridges while it was available. We’ve seen draft pick hauls of this size in recent years for perennial All-Stars, but seeing the Nets get five first-round picks — all but one of them unprotected — and an unprotected swap for a player who has never made the All-Star Game and will turn 28 next month is unprecedented....

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A rebuild isn’t for the faint of heart, and there are some tough days ahead for Brooklyn. Nonetheless, adding five more first-rounders to the haul the Nets already got with Bridges and Johnson in the Durant trade has positioned them to either hope they’re on the other end of a surprising draft haul or dealing those picks to supplement a homegrown core.

There’s now a path to relevance for Brooklyn that wasn’t clear prior to this trade.

Pelton’s analysis also includes a slightly lesser grade for the Knicks, a solid B.

Zach Lowe, ESPN (No grade:)

Pelton’s colleague at ESPN looks how the Nets reached their decision point on Bridges.

The overall transaction is a home run for the Nets, who have now turned Durant into nine first-round picks and a few other draft assets — with Cameron Johnson (and Dorian Finney-Smith) still on hand as trade pieces. They had to trade Bridges now. No second star was coming; that will likely become much clearer in the coming days.

They received huge offers for Bridges upon acquiring him at the 2023 trade deadline. Some teams in the Bridges derby then would still have been interested today, but at slightly lower prices, sources said. Bridges in Feb. 2023 was in the first year of a bargain four-year, $90 million extension. Today, he is halfway through that deal. Potential suitors were worried they would not be able to sign Bridges to an extension because of rules limiting the starting salary in such a deal.

Lowe also shared more thoughts on his podcast, The Lowe Post.

Sam Quinn, CBS Sports (A+)

Quinn, who was among the vociferous critics of the Nets lack of direction in the days leading up the trade, calls the possibilities “utterly transformative.”

The Nets obviously didn’t get a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander-caliber young player back in this deal, but the only real analogue in terms of value is the Paul George trade between the Thunder and Clippers five years ago. This deal has a chance to be utterly transformative for Brooklyn, taking an otherwise hopeless era and setting the foundation of one of the NBA’s most promising rebuilds.

At the deadline, it was reported that the Rockets were willing to give the Nets control of the first-round picks they acquired in the James Harden trade back to get Bridges for themselves. Many observers argued that Brooklyn should do this. No picks are more valuable in the NBA than your own. Controlling your own picks opens the door for tanking. The Nets held firm then. They got two of the three picks they owed to Houston back in this deal, giving Brooklyn a two-year window to be bad and benefit. That is especially important with a loaded 2025 draft class coming.

Quinn also does a detailed public reading on how Knicks picks have a history of coming back and biting James Dolan in his posterior.

And the Brooklyn picks were only part of the haul here. The Nets also got control of five unprotected Knicks picks (as well as another from the Bucks, though that one will likely be low) in the next seven years. Yes, I know, we just covered why this trade makes sense for the Knicks. But think back historically to how teams have fared trading for Knicks picks. LaMarcus Aldridge was taken No. 2 overall in 2006 with a pick that originally belonged to the Knicks. Joakim Noah went No. 7 a year later with a Knicks pick. Gordon Hayward in 2010? A Knicks pick. Jamal Murray in 2016? You guessed it, a Knicks pick. The James Dolan-era Knicks have practically produced an All-Star team of top draft picks for rivals...

We can only wish for a continuation of that trend.

Andy Bailey, Bleacher Report (A+

Bailey wonders aloud, how the hell did the Nets get the Knicks to make a deal this lopsided.

Mere months after ending the 2023-24 campaign in what felt like one of the most dire situations in the NBA, the Nets are suddenly flush with picks and headed toward a full-scale rebuild.

From the Bridges trade alone, they extracted a whopping five first-round picks, one first-round pick swap and two second-round picks. That’s genuinely ridiculous for a player of Bridges’ caliber.

With all due respect to the biggest name in this deal, Bridges is a three-and-D specialist who was miscast as a top scoring option in Brooklyn. Catch-all metrics from around the internet pegged him just inside the top 100 for the 2023-24 campaign, and now he’s being moved for a return that’s arguably bigger than the Rudy Gobert haul that everyone guffawed at two years ago.

Bottom line for Bailey: “However you look at it, the Nets aced this trade.” The Bleacher Report writer also gave the Knicks their lowest grade among the pundits, a mere C, arguing that the Knicks gave up a king’s ransom for Bridges, the kind of deal once reserved for superstars (like the one he replaced.)

Zach Harper, The Athletic/New York Times (A)

Harper is impressed with how big a surprise the trade was and like Bailey is amazed at how things came together so fast.

This is a surprising move by the Nets, considering they reportedly turned down Jalen Green and upwards of four first-round picks from Houston at the trade deadline. Between these two trades, they have acquired a wild number of picks to restock their cupboard and can now benefit from struggling on the court once again. (Houston has the third pick in this draft because of a pick owed to them by the Nets from the Harden deal) ...

Brooklyn has now essentially acquired nine first-round picks, along with Cameron Johnson, from the 2023 Durant trade. We’ll see what else the Nets can do to rebuild this roster over the next couple seasons in a favorable market.

Harper also gives a separate grade, an A-, to the trade that Sean Marks used to get his picks back from Houston...

This trade might be the first win-win-win we’ve seen in a while, but that depends on what the Nets and Rockets do with all this pick shuffling.

He likes the trade for the Knicks as well just not as much.

Erik Slater, Clutch Points (A)

More than any writer grading the move, Slater looks at it from a fan’s perspective and notes that the trade “will mean a lot of losing in the short term.” Still he sees the long-term benefit and like the rest of the experts Slater thinks the Nets aced their assignment, getting the franchise back on track.

The pair of deals completely transform Brooklyn’s outlook, taking what many considered a hopeless era and setting up a promising rebuild in the NBA’s biggest market. Following the deals, the Nets have 15 first-round picks over the next seven years.

Marks will add to that draft stash in the coming weeks as he fields offers for Bogdanovic, Cam Johnson, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Dennis Schroder. The Nets can also open over $80 million in cap space next offseason, depending on roster decisions.

They can use that space to sign high-upside free agents or absorb unwanted salaries in return for more picks, offering immense flexibility moving forward.

Overall, the Nets turned Bridges — who has never made an All-Star team — into five first-round picks and a swap while regaining control of their future from Houston. Yes, it will mean a lot of losing in the short term, but I’m not sure Brooklyn fans could have envisioned a better long-term outcome.

Long-term of course is the key to whether trade deserved all those A’s (although as John Maynard Keynes, the noted British economist once wrote, “in the long term, we are all dead,”) How long might a rebuild take for the Nets to get back to where they were back in 2018-19, before the Big Three experiment began. That rebuild started with Marks’ accession to the GM job in February 2016. After some fits and starts and two more 20-something win seasons, the Nets made the playoffs in 2018-19 and used that good fortune to recruit free agents Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to Brooklyn then trade for James Harden. A lot of things have changed since then,

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And as Lichtenstein gently reminds fans, nothing is guaranteed. A lot of teams have been building and rebuilding for more than a decade. He doesn’t mention but we will: the 2024-25 season could wind up as a replay of 2009-10 when the Nets went 12-70 and instead of winding up with John Wall, they got Derrick Favors who they made the most of by shipping him and some picks off to Utah for then All-NBA Deron Williams. There was a lot of hope then too.

Probably best to cherish all those A’s and A+’s now freely given but respect what the curmudgeonly Lichtenstein is saying as well. He like a lot of us were around in 2009-10 when the team went 0-18, 2-28, 4-46 before making a final surge, going 8-24 in the last 32 to finish 12-70. If you weren’t there, it’s hard to imagine how tough that was. In other words, nothing is settled until the wins and losses are tallied up and the ping pong balls are in the air. It’s why they play the games.

• Where Do The Nets Go From Here? - Steve Lichtenstein - Steve’s Newsletter