The Brooklyn Nets thought they had a championship foundation in place when they paired Kevin Durant with Kyrie Irving in free agency during the 2019 offseason. Flash forward to the present day and neither Durant nor Irving is still on the roster, both having been shipped off at this season’s trade deadline with no postseason success to show for it. The new-look Nets are young, scrappy bunch who plays hard. One of those players is Mikal Bridges who arrived from the Phoenix Suns as part of the Durant trade. Since the move, Bridges has been having a breakout season and his numbers have been on par with Durant’s Suns stats as per the Twitter page StatMuse.

Mikal Bridges has had the green light to shoot and has been used as a primary offensive option, a role he did not have with the Suns. Since the trade, Bridges has been averaging 26.1 points per game and 5.9 rebounds with shooting splits of 54 percent from the field, 51 percent from three-point range and 91 percent from the free-throw line. In comparison, Kevin Durant has been averaging 26.7 points per game and 7.3 rebounds with shooting splits of 69 percent from the field, 54 percent from the three-point line and 88 percent from the free-throw line in a Sun jersey.

The Nets are obviously going to have their growing pains with this new group of players, but they have a solid young foundation with Bridges being a key part of that. Even with the trade, the Nets are still 35-28 and in sixth place in the Eastern Conference standings.