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The Brooklyn Nets made their decision to enter a full-scale rebuild by trading Mikal Bridges to their inner-city rival in the New York Knicks for a host of draft picks. However, before the Knicks were able to get their hands on Bridges, there was another team trying to trade for him.
According to Jake Fischer of Yahoo! Sports, the Utah Jazz attempted to trade for Bridges this week in order to surround star forward Lauri Markkanen with the necessary co-stars to make themselves a better team. It looks like Utah was hoping to add someone like Bridges so that the Jazz could be an interesting team for Paul George to go to in free-agency.
“The Utah Jazz have all the cap space, veteran salaries and exorbitant draft capital to add the type of co-stars — such as Mikal Bridges, once upon a time, whom the team attempted to land this week, sources said, before New York splurged six years of first-round draft assets for the Villanova product — to round out a roster that already features All-Star forward Lauri Markkanen,” Fischer wrote.
As Nets fans know, Brooklyn traded Bridges to the Knicks in exchange for forward Bojan Bogdanovic, who could be traded again at some point, and as many as five first-round picks if the Milwaukee Bucks are still a good team next season (top-4 protected). Fischer reported on last week that the Jazz were one of the teams monitoring Bridges’ trade status, along with New York and the Houston Rockets.
Utah has 15 first-round picks between 2025 and 2031 so they have plenty of draft capital to work with after they traded away Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell with the past few years. Most of the extra first-round picks are from the Minnesota Timberwolves and Cleveland Cavaliers, respectively, so it looks like Brooklyn may have had its pick of draft picks to own in exchange for Bridges and they chose the Knicks’ draft stash.