How did the Philadelphia 76ers get the Mikal Bridges deal so wrong?

Mikal Bridges just got paid.

After turning in a breakout third season as a member of the Phoenix Suns, Bridges has just agreed to a four-year, $90 million contract extension that will keep him in the desert through the 2025-26 NBA season.

For Bridges, this is a really good contract at a very good number.

After somewhat platooning during his second season with the Suns, Bridges took his game up a notch starting alongside players like Devin Booker and Chris Paul, averaging 13.5 points and 4.3 rebounds in 32.6 minutes of action a night, while playing some excellent D and knocking down 42.5 percent of his 3s.

Needless to say, there isn’t a team in the NBA who couldn’t use Mikal Bridges on their roster, as he’s rapidly becoming the poster boy for a modern-day 3-and-D NBA wing… including the Philadelphia 76ers, who initially drafted Bridges 10th overall only to trade him away to the Phoenix Suns for Zhaire Smith and Miami’s 2021 first-round pick.

*sigh* Here we go again.

The Philadelphia 76ers will never get over trading Mikal Bridges.

When the Philadelphia 76ers drafted Mikal Bridges 10th overall in the 2018 NBA Draft, it felt too good to be true.

After turning in a very promising 2017-18 campaign highlighted by their first winning record since the lockout-shortened season in 2011-12, the Sixers secured the services of a young, ascending wing with deep ties to the Delaware Valley and a very impressive collegiate career.

Would he start at shooting guard next to Ben Simmons and Robert Covington? Or would the team kick RoCo to the four and use Dario Saric as a sixth man? Either way, this was a very good problem to have, especially since the thought of Jimmy Butler in a red, white, and blue uniform was still unfathomable.

Heck, one could make the argument that had the team still made the Butler trade, they wouldn’t have needed to then trade for Tobias Harris, as Bridges could have taken up that fifth starting spot that Wilson Chandler never quite ran away with. Considering Harris’ shooting woes during his initial run with the team, it certainly wouldn’t have been the worst thing to keep Landry Shamet and instead swapped out Chandler plus picks for a better-fitting piece alongside Bridges and company.

*sigh* but you know what they say about things that feel a bit too good to be true, right? They usually are.

Like 15 minutes after Bridges was announced as a member of the Sixers, interim GM Brett Brown rained on the City of Brotherly Love’s Mummers Parade – a tradition Bridges knows very well – and traded the Villanova great to Phoenix for the 16th overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft and Miami’s unprotected first-round pick in 2021, a pick that eventually landed at 18th overall and was used by the OKC Thunder to select Tre Mann.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Bridges balled out, Smith never quite looked comfortable at the NBA level, especially after his sesame seed allergic reaction, and the Sixers ultimately traded the pick they acquired from Phoenix along with Chandler, Shamet, Mike Muscala, their 2020 first-round pick (used on Saddiq Bey), and a pair of second-round picks to procure Harris, Boban Marjanovic, and Mike Scott from a Los Angeles Clippers team then-helmed by Doc Rivers.

I don’t want to put too much of that on Smith, as he didn’t ask to be drafted by a 50-plus win team or to almost die in their sted, but why on earth did said 50-win team think drafting a developmental shooting guard who played power forward in college was a good idea? Sure, their depth was decent enough heading into the 2018-19 NBA season, but Bridges was, is, and will forever be three years older than Smith and was far more ready to contribute to a professional team right out of the gate as a rookie, as the two players’ respective stat lines wholeheartedly proves.

Now, had Smith developed into the next Kawhi Leonard – albeit a very short Kawhi Leonard – would the Sixers have been kicking themselves for letting him pass by? Maybe so. Who knows, had the Suns not drafted him, perhaps he’d have fallen into the 20s, and Brett Brown could have clawed his way back into the first round to still secure his services, but to bet on projection when you already have a win-now team feels like a pretty big oversight, especially when the GM who made the deal is the guy tasked with coaching said team.

Sidebar: I know this might be premature, but I had similar feelings when the Sixers drafted Jaden Spring 28th overall despite more experienced/win-now players still being on the board. I hope I’m proven wrong, but right now, I don’t see how that one helps in 2021-22.

To put it as plainly as possible, Brett Brown got got. The Phoenix Suns saw an easy mark with no real front office experience and nabbed their guy off the promise of a young athletic guard and the hope that the 2021 NBA Draft would both feature a bad Miami Heat team and high schoolers. Instead, the Philadelphia 76ers got a guard who played 111 minutes as a rookie, no help with their backcourt defensive problems and a pick they flipped a few months later alongside one of their better young contributors for Tobias Harris. All in all, not great.