Things can change fast in the NBA, as the Brooklyn Nets are well aware. In the span of a few hours, Mikal Bridges went from being the team’s core piece to being shipped out to the New York Knicks in a blockbuster trade.
Nets wing Dorian Finney-Smith likely already knew this, but he got quite the reminder as a result of the Bridges saga. He told reporters on Sunday that he and Bridges had been training together when news of the trade broke. According to Finney-Smith, the two actually continued training, but the tenor of the workouts changed quickly.
“We were meeting up at the gym,” Finney-Smith told reporters on Sunday. “We still kept training together the next two days after the trade happened. We went from ‘what are we gonna do next year?’ to ‘we’re about to kick y’all’s a–. We gotta break that Villanova s–t up.'”
Were things awkward? Probably not, but the energy was probably a bit different after the deal went down, and understandably so.
If the Nets are to be believed, the trade came as a real surprise to Bridges as well. Those workouts must have been weird, even while they remained cordial.
