The Brooklyn Nets fire sale is officially on after the Kevin Durant trade. The team now has just a few hours to get what they can for the players they brought in with the Durant and Kyrie Irving trades. The most valuable asset they have from these deals is former Phoenix Suns forward Mikal Bridges, and flipping him at the NBA trade deadline is now essential to set the Nets up for the future. And the best deal they can get involves a three-team deal involving the Los Angeles Clippers and Houston Rockets.
The Nets best NBA trade deadline deal is a three-team trade featuring Mikal Bridges
Kyrie Irving is gone. Kevin Durant is gone. The Nets now have 27 3-and-D wings (don’t fact-check that number) and nothing else. The good news is, the players the Nets brought in with the Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant trades hold a good amount of value.
Nearly every contending team in the league — and even the non-contending ones — would be better with a 3-and-D wing like Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson, Jae Crowder, or Dorian Finney-Smith. If the Nets can get 110 cents on the dollar for any of these players, they need to pull the trigger before the 3 pm ET NBA trade deadline.
Of these wings, Crowder is the one to trade the quickest as he is the oldest and on an expiring contract. Bridges will be the most in demand, though, so putting him out there could bring back some interesting offers.
The best Nets trade out there could involve a deal with the Rockets that returns the Nets' own picks, which they traded to Houston in the James Harden deal. However, to match salaries, Houston’s Eric Gordon is the most likely player to move. The problem is, he’s of no use to the Nets right now.
Enter the LA Clippers.
The Clippers need to shake the team up at the NBA trade deadline, especially in light of the Kevin Durant trade that improve the Phoenix Suns and the Kyrie deal that helped the Dallas Mavericks get better. Adding Gordon would be a solid step in that direction.
So, a three-team deal involving the Nets, Rockets, and Clippers looks like this:
- Clippers get Eric Gordon
- Rockets get Mikal Bridges and a future Clippers second-round pick
- Nets get Reggie Jackson, Robert Covington, two future firsts from Houston, and one from Los Angeles
This makes sense for all involved.
First, the Clippers get a veteran, dead-eye shooter in Gordon to help space the floor for Kawhi Leonard and Paul George in their pursuit of a championship. Jackson has more value as an expiring than as the team’s sixth man, especially when John Wall gets healthy. And Covington is only playing 15.9 minutes per game.
Jackson, Covington, a first, and a second are a good price for a career 36.9% 3-point shooter like Gordon.
The Rockets are rumored to have an interest in Mikal Bridges as the first adult piece of their rebuild. Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., and Alperen Sengun all look like legit players, and now the Rockets must start putting real veterans around them.
Bridges is only 26, but he is playoff-tested with the Suns. He is young enough to fit with Green, Smith, and Sengun (who are all 19 or 20) and old enough to be considered a long-term leader on that team.
Giving up two firsts — maybe even two of Brooklyn’s, say in 2024 and 2026 — and Eric Gordon for a young veteran to help lead the team’s rebuild is a good price to pay.
Finally, you have the Nets.
The team came into this week with two superstars and a few future first-round picks. After this trade, the team will have the Mavs' 2029 first-round pick, the Suns' 2023, 2025, 2027, and 2029 picks, a future Clippers pick, and two of their own picks back, which is huge for a rebuild.
Contract-wise, Jackson is an expiring and Covington is on a decreasing deal, so his cap number goes from $12.3 this season to $11.6 next year. And this offseason, he’ll become an expiring contract himself, making him even more valuable for the Nets' rebuild.
The Kevin Durant trade will make things tough for the Nets for a while. However, with this Mikal Bridges move at the NBA trade deadline, Brooklyn can take Kyrie Irving’s surprise trade request and turn it into a full-scale rebuild overnight.
This isn’t the most fun way to build an NBA champion, but it seems like Nets owner Joe Tsai now accepts that it is generally the way that works best.
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