Now that Mikal Bridges has put the FIBA World Cup in the rear view mirror, the NBA season is around the corner. And the Nets’ rising star will look to carry his red-hot form from the former right into the latter.
Despite Team USA’s disappointing finish in Manila — Bridges and fellow Nets teammate Cam Johnson coming back stateside without a medal of any color – the 27-year-old hardly returned empty-handed.
Everyone from Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn to general manager Sean Marks to the players themselves expressed confidence beforehand that the World Cup experience would make both Bridges and Johnson better players.
Now Bridges is expected to take yet another quantum leap forward, and is the overwhelming betting favorite to win the Most Improved Player Award this upcoming season.
“I think I will never say no, it’s an honor every time,” Bridges said of playing for Team USA in the future, with the Olympics looming next summer. “No matter the result, I wouldn’t trade those six weeks. The biggest thing is the relationship we built. That’s what I take away from this.”
Bridges also will take away another step forward in his game.
While Anthony Edwards was Team USA’s leading scorer, Bridges’ 18.51 rating actually edged out the Minnesota star’s 18.14. And as the second-leading scorer, Bridges actually shot an über-efficient 63.3 percent from the floor, .556 from behind the arc, and was still the top defensive disruptor.
“I already knew what kind of players (Bridges and Johnson) were from coaching against them,” Team USA coach Steve Kerr said of the Nets duo. “But they’re so mature: There’s a calming sense from both guys. And they’re also modern-day basketball players: shoot the three, guard multiple positions, long athletically. They’re huge components to this team.”
But Team USA’s litany of weaknesses — no rebounding, no size, no international experience, no established NBA superstars (shall we go on?) — proved too much to overcome, and they finished fourth.
Considering Bridges’ already-established scoring exploits for last season’s Brooklyn squad that limped into the playoffs, it’s clear he can be a top option on a bad team. Now he and the Nets need to answer the nagging question of whether he can be the No. 1 scoring option on a good one?
Bridges boosted his scoring average of 17.2 points last season with Phoenix all the way up to a breakthrough 26.1 points for Brooklyn after the trade. But with that quantum leap essentially limited to the final third of the season, Bridges finished behind Utah’s Lauri Markkanen, OKC’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson for Most Improved Player.
Expected to come out of the gates as Brooklyn’s go-to scorer, and with the momentum carried over from Manila, Bridges is the runaway favorite to win this year according to both Draft Kings and Fan Duel.
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Call centers
With rebounding a longstanding weakness in Brooklyn, complaining for either a better center or more centers, or both, is an annual pastime among Nets fans.
It hasn’t mattered that their switch-happy system has to concede some things to take away others, and that switching teams are by nature always vulnerable on the defensive glass. The call for centers always comes.
Starting center Nic Claxton finished among the top-5 in the Most Improved Player voting last season, and has spent much of this offseason working on his jumper and free-throw shooting. He’s expected to be far more involved in the Kevin Durant/Kyrie Irving-less offense, but Brooklyn should have more bodies behind him. (That isn’t likely to again include Ben Simmons, who said Vaughn has assured him that he’ll be playing point guard — and not as a backup big man, like he did for parts of last season.)
While the Nets have added quantity down low, it remains to be seen if they’ve added quality.
Day’Ron Sharpe returns for his third season and will be joined by rookie first-round pick Noah Clowney and new signees Darius Bazley, 6-foot-9, 240-pound Trendon Watford and onetime three-year veteran Harry Giles.
Brooklyn will also add Patrick Gardner on a training camp invite. The 6-foot-11 Marist product is also returning from the FIBA World Cup, having just played for Egypt. At 24, he’s roughly five years older than Clowney, and older than Watford and Bazley as well. The latter two could well be fighting for a roster spot, while Giles — on an Exhibit 9 — is a longshot. Gardner is likely destined for G League Long Island.
(Brooklyn was impressed with 7-footer Dereck Lively II in the draft, but he shot up the boards and ended up in Dallas).
A rule in need of a problem
The NBA Board of Governors approved a new Player Participation Policy this past week, one that punishes teams for resting star players.
For the purposes of the new rule, “star” means anybody that’s been an All-Star or All-NBA in the prior three seasons.
“While we want to state a strong principle, I would say at least initially we’re taking a somewhat light touch here,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged this week. “I think under the notion that change will probably happen here incrementally. I think we’ll state this principle, see how teams react and see if more needs to be done.”
Ironically, the Nets’ load management of Durant and Irving likely contributed to this rule, but now that both are gone, they only have a single player who it even applies to: Ben Simmons.
Bridges, however, would fall into that category should he make February’s All-Star game. But he hasn’t missed a game since his junior year of high school, and is expected to play his 400th straight contest eight games into this upcoming season. There are no load management issues there.