In the Mikal Bridges trade, the Knicks will send to Brooklyn a 2025 Bucks pick that is top-4 protected, their own unprotected firsts in 2025, 2027, 2029 and 2031, and a 2025 second-round pick, plus a pick swap in 2026. New York also gets a 2026 second-rounder from Brooklyn in the deal.

Brooklyn couldn’t possibly move forward with the deal without the other half of it: Swapping future picks owed by the Phoenix Suns to Brooklyn for those owed by the Nets the Houston Rockets. Yes, they traded draft picks so they could tank. The NBA is amazing.

This came at a considerable cost, actually. People’s brains are spinning right now trying to process all this, but the Nets had two unprotected firsts from the Dallas Mavericks and Suns in 2029 that now are essentially controlled by the Rockets – Houston gets the better of the two automatically, and can swap for the other one with its own pick. Given the odds of Phoenix being awful by then, that’s a sweet haul.

The benefit for Brooklyn is that the 2025 pick swap given to Houston in the James Harden trade was removed, allowing the Nets to freely tank this coming season and have it benefit themselves rather than the Rockets. The Nets also got their own unprotected 2026 first-rounder back, again a key condition for bottoming out. Houston’s reward, in addition to that 2029 bounty, was an unprotected first-rounder from Phoenix in 2027 and a complicated pick swap in 2025 that can turn either their own pick or the Oklahoma City Thunder’s into Phoenix’s pick if it benefits them.

So the Nets gave up two unprotected picks (2029, 2027) for one unprotected pick in return (2026), and gave up two swaps (2029, 2025) for one admittedly more valuable swap (2025). It was understandable business for the Nets because it gets them out of mediocre, chase-the-play-in limbo and sets them in a new direction. They’re in a much better place now than they were 24 hours ago. Finally, just to be clear: Remember that there was no scenario where the Nets were making the Bridges trade without doing the Houston deal. That 2025 pick swap was never going to be as valuable to the Rockets as it now is to the Nets.

But my goodness, this was fantastic business for Houston.