Three years ago, the course of two franchises changed in roughly 40 minutes. At about 8:30 p.m. on June 21, the 76ers took Mikal Bridges with the 10th pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. By 9:15, news had broken that they had traded him away to the Suns.
In real-time, the sequence lit up the league, as a national audience watched Philadelphia trade away a hometown kid who reveled in the idea of playing for the same organization that employed his mom. While the personal drama of it all consumed fans — Bridges walked around Barclays Center in a Sixers hat while the world already knew of his next destination — the transaction itself would shape the futures of Phoenix and Philadelphia. At that moment, Bridges could only grasp the change that just took place.
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“I didn’t … I didn’t know what they were saying,” he said that night of being told about the deal. “I was confused when they told me. I was like ‘Oh it’s time to get ready for Phoenix.’”
Now, however, he is a foundational part of a team that stands two wins away from the NBA Finals. The Suns hold a 2-0 lead on the Clippers in the Western Conference finals, thanks in part to the 14 points Bridges scored in the Game 1 win. While he continues to flourish in his third professional season, the 76ers will watch from home after losing to the Hawks in the second round in seven games.
Today, that deal is more fascinating than it was at the time it was made. In acquiring Bridges, the Suns added a high-level 3-and-D wing to put next to Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton, who they took No. 1 on the same night. In trading away Bridges, Philadelphia took the more open-ended path, adding Zhaire Smith with the No. 16 pick and the rights to an unprotected Heat first-round pick in 2021. It was a juxtaposition of needs. Phoenix saw the perfect fit for its current roster; Philadelphia wanted an asset it could use to acquire its next star.
“It’s a night that’s turned into one of these recrimination nights,” one person with knowledge of the trade said. “But actually, no, everyone did a good job.”
While the fallout from the trade was bizarre to watch as it played out, the deal itself was odd too. The 76ers had no intent to trade Bridges when they drafted him, according to multiple league sources.
They entered the day with Bridges and Smith next to each other on their draft board. Bridges, a lithe 6-foot-6 wing with a 7-1 wingspan and a sweet jumper, had just won two NCAA championships at Villanova; he was the favorite of the coaching staff. Smith, an athletic 6-3 guard from Texas Tech, was preferred by the team’s scouts. After their pre-draft discussions, the organization settled on Bridges as the better option of the two on its draft board.
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That set them up for draft night, which was sure to move quickly, especially for a franchise that had just seen a seismic front office change after general manager Bryan Colangelo resigned following a bizarre set of circumstances that revolved around burner Twitter accounts. Head coach Brett Brown took over as the lead decision-maker, though minority owner David Heller reportedly had a strong influence, and managing partners Josh Harris and David Blitzer ultimately signed off on the trade.
Bridges had been a natural fit for Philadelphia. He played some of his games in college at their arena, his mother worked as an executive for the club, and he had the exact skillset the team needed as it built out its roster around Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. When he received a call from a member of the front office after Philadelphia took him at No. 10 overall he received no indication he would be playing anywhere but in the same city he had played high school and college ball.
The Suns, however, hoped to still make a deal for him. They had made calls earlier to teams in the second half of the lottery to gauge their interest in trading down. The Cavaliers at eight said no, so did the Knicks at nine. The 76ers did too but their denial was softer, which gave Ryan McDonough, the Suns general manager at the time, the thought that there might still be a door open.
Phoenix tried to use its No. 16 pick to try to trade up as the lottery preceded with two players in mind: Bridges and, according to league sources, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. They had held a private workout for the Kentucky guard and were impressed by personality and testing. Gilgeous-Alexander went 11th to the Hornets and was then traded to the Clippers, while Phoenix could not find a willing trade partner.
“It was dead or done,” McDonough said.
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Bridges had grabbed Phoenix’s attention because of his college resume and his snug fit on the young roster McDonough was building. The team’s director of scouting at the time lived in Philadelphia and also gotten an up-close appreciation for him, along with the intel to back it up.
Not only had Bridges ended up high on the Suns’ draft board, but also McDonough recognized that he would be among the last of the players available who the front office had assessed with a high-to-mid lottery grade. The gap between Bridges and the players who would be available to Phoenix at No. 16 made the general manager push to try to swing a trade for him.
“A number of things about him stood out,” McDonough said. “He’s really intelligent. He’s got off-the-chart character, work ethic. Everybody at Villanova raves about him. He’s a winner as a human being and as a player. He had a tremendous amount of success at Villanova. We saw how much he improved playing at Villanova for Jay Wright… We were looking for —I don’t want to pigeonhole Mikal — with a 3-and-D wing but somebody who could do that plus other things.”
But the Suns re-engaged in trade talks with the 76ers toward the end of the lottery. Bridges seemed to be available. Initially, the Suns offered the No. 16 pick and more, but did not include the rights to the 2021 Heat pick, which they had acquired in a 2015 trade when they sent Goran Dragic to Miami.
The 76ers didn’t budge. They were in search of a third star player and set their sights on Miami’s unprotected pick. During pre-draft meetings, as team brass brainstormed the type of assets they could acquire to help them land one, the Heat pick was identified as the best one they could realistically land.
“If second-round picks are cigarettes in prison,” the person said, “unprotected picks are conjugal visits.”
As talks continued, the Suns prepared for two scenarios. In one, they would send a pick into the league office for themselves; in the other they would send one in for Philadelphia.
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“We had to be prepared for both of those,” McDonough said. “It gets a little bit tense at times sometimes when you’re on the clock because you can’t tell the NBA ‘I need more time’ or ‘We’re waiting on the 76ers to tell us.'”
Finally, the Suns acceded and the deal was reached with less than a minute remaining before the pick was due. McDonough asked a 76ers exec who they wanted to pick and found it was Smith.
The circumstances around the trade had been peculiar. It’s rare for a trade to happen on draft night after the original pick had already been made.
“It doesn’t,” one league source said. “Usually it’s pre-arranged; 95 percent of the time it’s pre-arranged.”
The choice to deal Bridges was an alteration in the franchise’s original course. The 76ers had taken a two-track approach that day, first deciding what to do with their lottery pick, and then in search of another piece that could help them land another star player in the future. The answer to the first decision led them to Bridges, the answer to the second led them to trade him away.
The weight of it was clear when Brown called a member of Bridges’ camp later. But without the draft pick they acquired, the 76ers likely would have been unable to trade for Tobias Harris the following January, when they sent the Heat pick, another future first, Landry Shamet, and more to the Clippers.
The Suns got exactly who they wanted. Bridges has become a key part of the team, slotting in as the unsung star for a franchise on the rise.
“When Mikal got that hat and walked across the stage I think he thought, and the 76ers thought, that he was going to be a Philadelphia 76er,” McDonough said. “That was the plan at the time. But the plan changed.”
(Photo: Mike Stobe / Getty Images)
Mike Vorkunov is the national basketball business reporter for The Athletic. He covers the intersection of money and basketball and covers the sport at every level. He previously spent three-plus seasons as the New York Knicks beat writer. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeVorkunov
