Goodbye Superteams, Hello Infrastructure

The New York Knicks are a team with a long past, but a short history. Over 78 seasons, they’ve won more than 50 games just 13 times; their last championship was 52 years ago. Except for the romanticized years of the 70s and 90s, the footprint of most Knicks teams exists only so far as the energy required to keep their Basketball Reference pages humming. Whereas the Celtics and Lakers are entrenched institutions of success, the Knicks are your neighborhood’s cursed storefront—the coffeehouse turned tapas joint, turned Chinese restaurant, turned vape shop, turned Bank of America, turned different vape shop. 

Now, though, New York has turned itself into a championship contender.

By trading five first round picks for Mikal Bridges, the Knicks have cemented their place in the NBA’s upper crust. Beyond the bromance between Bridges and his fellow Villanovans, the roster is undeniably loaded. In Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle, the team has a simpatico pair of All-NBA stars; with Bridges and OG Anunoby (provided he re-signs), they have the best defensive duo in the league. What’s more, Donte DiVencenzo, Josh Hart and Miles McBride head up a bench unit full of guys who could start, if not star, on lesser teams. Outside of Boston, not many teams can go band for band with New York in terms of their sheer number of good players. 

In fact, even before adding Bridges, they weren’t too far removed from the NBA’s best–at full strength, the Knicks already kicked ass. When Randle, Brunson and Anunoby shared the court, they outscored opponents by 25.6 points per 100 possessions. Across the regular season and playoffs, the Knicks went 26-5 when Anunoby was healthy.    

Accordingly, the beauty of Bridges is that he enhances the team without disrupting it. The playbook doesn’t need to be rejiggered; the players don’t need to learn to dance in a new time signature. Perhaps the league’s premier “three-and-D” wing, Bridges is a purely additive force. Most players of this caliber are obvious, immutable solids; Bridges is gas, expanding or contracting to fill whatever space is needed. 

Offensively, he’s an ace spot-up threat who made the 12th most threes in the league last year, but is also adaptable enough to gin up enough on-ball juice when needed. Upon arriving in Brooklyn from Phoenix at the 2023 trade deadline, Bridges uncorked a convincing Kevin Durant impression, averaging 26.1 points per game over the last 27 games of the season. 

On defense, Bridges is sharp and exacting; his unyielding competence approaches greatness. Although he succumbed to ennui towards the end of last season, he usually doesn’t make mistakes—he keeps ball-handlers in front of him when he’s guarding the ball and seldom misses a rotation when he’s not. In this sense, Bridges is less a glue guy than he is a grease guy. Things work more smoothly when he’s around. 

Still, there’s a reason that teams generally don’t trade five draft picks for a zero-time All-Star who’s best seen, but not heard. Descriptors like “adaptable” and “amenable” are better suited for rescue dogs than guys who are expected to propel you to the NBA Finals. Despite Bridges’ considerable talent, there’s always been an inverse relationship between his goodness and his busy-ness. He’s a great offensive player as long as he doesn’t have to create too much offense, an elite defender as long as he’s hidden from anyone who’s too difficult to defend. 

Last season, the Nets promoted Bridges above his capabilities, forcing him to fend for himself as the team’s load-bearing star. In turn, he barfed up his worst shooting season since his rookie year. Like basketball pioneer Fidel Castro, Bridges is capable of getting a bucket, but at what cost to the communal spirit? Bridges’ 43.5 percent field goal percentage ranked 56th among the 61 players who averaged more than 19 points per game last season as the Nets bricked their way to a 32-50 record. 

Similarly, his vaunted defense has proven to be sneakily vulnerable against top-level scorers over the years. Way back in 2022 when Bridges was still in Phoenix, he lost his job as the Suns’ go-to defensive stopper because his noodly frame was overmatched against Luka Doncic and Brandon Ingram. 

Viewed in the most uncharitable light, getting Bridges is a manifestation of 30 years of the Knicks’ worst impulses: rather than hold out for a true MVP candidate like Joel Embiid or Giannis Antetokounmpo, they went all-in for their nepo-baby point guard’s bestie. It’s no mystery why they pursued Bridges over similar players like Devin Vassell or Trey Murphy III.

Nevertheless, it was a good trade. Don’t bother with the tedious hemming and hawing about the value of a 2031 draft pick that’ll one day be used on a kid who’s currently 12 years old. The Knicks are a better team today than they were yesterday; they’re closer to a title than they’ve been at any point in recent memory. Fans went to bed happy. 

While trading for Bridges doesn’t transform the team on its own, it fits within the larger meta of how top teams are built. Superteams are passé—the league as a whole is so talented that the upside of stacking fistfuls of superstars isn’t worth gutting the rest of your roster in the process. It doesn’t matter whether Jalen Brunson is a top-five player because he’s still good enough to play like one, as evidenced by the way he piloted a ghost ship roster to within a game of the conference finals. 

Instead, chemistry and continuity are what separate the wheat from the chaff. Boston ripped off one of the greatest seasons in NBA history not because they had the best player, but because they had the best infrastructure around their best player. Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets won a title before Joel Embiid and the 76ers because they had the foresight to keep their core players together during lean times. Brunson, Bridges, Hart and DiVencenzo are four peas in a pod(cast) and know how to win together–and that has to count for something.

Pending a new deal for Anunoby, and inevitable extensions for Brunson and Randle, the Knicks have nearly their entire rotation locked up for the foreseeable future, allowing them to withstand the newfangled “second apron” restrictions. This is a likable team that has the talent to win a championship and the runway to do so. These are the good times. History awaits.