The Phoenix Suns shook up the West playoff race late Wednesday night when they landed Kevin Durant in a blockbuster trade with the Brooklyn Nets.
The trade immediately vaults the Suns back into the championship favorites tier in the NBA, as he will provide them with an awful lot of the things that they desperately needed in their last two playoff trips. Going to Brooklyn are Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson — Jae Crowder got rerouted to Milwaukee — along with a host of future first round picks. While the Nets listened to offers on both, they decided to keep the two young wings to add to their growing collection of forwards. Both players made their way to Brooklyn on Thursday and were in attendance for the Nets game against the Bulls, with Bridges doing an interview with Jared Greenberg on the TNT broadcast.
When asked what his reaction was to the trade, he had a pretty grounded view of it all, saying “I get it, sh*t…[KD]’s one of my favorite players.”
Mikal Bridges "I get it, shit, like – oh, excuse my language" pic.twitter.com/hqcYRZKFgU
— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) February 10, 2023
There are times where a guy is blindsided by a deal, but given the talks that took place this summer, Bridges probably had at least a bit of an idea that if Durant were in fact to be on the market again, his name would come up. As such, he understands the business of it all, even if it still came as a shock to be moved in the middle of the night.
Bridges also talked to Greenberg about how he found out about the trade, as he learned about it because his now-former teammate Damion Lee called him talking about how sorry he was for Bridges, who then asked him what the hell he was talking about.
Mikal Bridges found out via FaceTime with Damion Lee that he got traded to the Nets pic.twitter.com/Ns7PjqYmwh
— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) February 10, 2023
It’s gotta be a bit jarring to get a call in the night with a teammate apologizing to you, wondering what he means, only to find out you are headed across the country for one of the league’s all-time greats. Bridges is handling it like a pro, but you can tell he’s still processing everything that went down over the past 24 hours.
