We should have seen this coming.
In 2022, the New York Knicks made a small trade that apparently signaled a bigger scheme. About a month before the trade deadline, they acquired Cam Reddish from the Atlanta Hawks to pair him with his former Duke teammate and then-Knicks guard RJ Barrett. People around the league (including yours truly) wondered if this was the movement before the movement. That is, to eventually lure Zion Williamson to New York and complete the Duke triumvirate that won the ACC championship and ultimately reached the Elite 8 of the 2019 NCAA tournament.
We got it all wrong. Little did we know what Leon Rose and coach Tom Thibodeau were up to. We should have aimed higher, because here’s the thing: That Duke team didn’t win an NCAA championship.
On Tuesday night, the Knicks traded Bojan Bogdanović five first-round picks and a first-round pick trade to acquire former Brooklyn Nets wing Mikal Bridges, a package that somehow trumps the Knicks’ bold plan. By acquiring Bridges, it appears they are recreating Villanova’s 2016 and 2018 NCAA championship teams. Bridges will now join his former Wildcat teammates Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo as they try to duplicate their success at the college level.
The Knicks, from now on, will seek an NBA championship while featuring four players from the same NCAA championship teams. Former Villanova coach Jay Wright reaction to Comércio spoke about the rarity of what is in front of his former players:
The Knicks never completed the Duke trio by trading for Zion; Reddish and Barrett didn’t last long in New York and Williamson is still in New Orleans. But it’s clear the Knicks value collegial camaraderie. The collaboration of Brunson, Hart and DiVincenzo helped them win 50 games and reach the Eastern Conference semifinals last season. Now they are diving back into the well.
It got me thinking: has the Nova Knicks ever happened before? An NBA team basically trying to produce a sequel to an NCAA champion team?
The short answer is no. Not to the extent of what the Knicks are trying to do.
At least not from my research since 1990. With Brunson, DiVincenzo, Hart and now Bridges, the Knicks will have four players from the 2018 championship team on the roster. Once they take the floor, it will represent the largest number of college teammates from an NCAA championship team to play on the same NBA team in the modern era for any team.
In fact, scratch that. This ties from last season team that didn’t have Mikal Bridges, but he did There’s Ryan Arcidiacono.
If they add free agent Arcidiano to the roster, they will make history, with five fellow college champions trying out for the same NBA team.
Here are four other iterations since 1990 that have had as many as three NCAA champion teammates playing together — and what they can tell us, if anything, about what the fate of this group might be.
Pitino’s Kentucky Celtics 1997-2003: 3 teammates at once
The players: Antoine Walker, Ron Mercer, Tony Delk, Wayne Turner and Walter McCarty.
Rick Pitino famously declared that “Larry Bird is not walking through that door,” but basically the entire Kentucky Wildcats team did. Pitino won the 1996 NCAA championship at Kentucky and then took the Celtics job with the bold ambition of raising another Boston banner with essentially all of the Wildcats. Nine Wildcats from the 1996 starting lineup went on to play in the NBA and five of them, at one time or another, walked through the Celtics’ door in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
There were no secrets here. Although he inherited Walker, who was picked eighth overall in the 1996 draft, Pitino and the Celtics selected Mercer sixth overall and traded for McCarty before the 1997-98 season, bringing the total to three players from that 1996 team. Following seasons, the Celtics signed Tony Delk and Wayne Turner, but never more than three at the same time. (In fact, Delk arrived after Pitino resigned in 2001.)
Pitino’s reign as Celtics coach was considered a disaster. However, there is one key difference between the Celtics team and this version of the Knicks: Jay Wright is not coaching the Knicks. Tom Thibodeau won’t be accused of playing favorites like Pitino, and that will likely be a big help in the Knicks locker room.
Result: No winning seasons in Pitino’s three-plus seasons.
UConn Pistons 2009-11: 3* teammates at once
The players: Ben Gordon, Richard Hamilton and Charlie Villanueva
Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva didn’t overlap with Rip Hamilton’s college tenure (hence the asterisk above), but these are three UConn champions who played on the same team in the pros. It doesn’t perfectly match what we’re going for here, but I think there are worse things than poaching UConn starting lineups for talent (a preview of the 2024 draft?).
Hamilton came from the 1998-99 UConn team that defeated Duke and eventually went to Detroit, where he won another championship in 2004. Meanwhile, his alma mater, the 2003-04 UConn team was busy winning its own title, and later became boasted six NBA players – Gordon, Emeka Okafor, Villanueva, Josh Boone, Hilton Armstrong and Marcus Williams. Gordon and Okafor were the only ones to leave school immediately after cutting the nets and the rest came later.
Neither Gordon nor Villanueva were drafted by the Pistons, but both reunited in free agency in the summer of 2009, signing a deal with Joe Dumars’ Pistons – a team that pivoted after the Flip Saunders era. The Detroit Huskies era turned out to be entirely forgettable in the two seasons under head coach John Kuester, who never coached again.
Result: No playoff appearances in two seasons.
Maryland Wizards 2003-04: 3 teammates at once
The players: Steve Blake, Lonny Baxter and Juan Dixon
Imagine if Pitino won a championship at Boston College and then tried to acquire all of his players for the Celtics. That was the Maryland Wizards. The 2002 Maryland Terrapins produced four NBA players after defeating Indiana for the NCAA title and three of them almost immediately played for their local NBA team, the Wizards. The only one who didn’t – Chris Wilcox – played 11 years in the league, but never for the D.C. team.
The Wizards have not been intimidated by Pitino’s reign in Boston. In 2002, they took Dixon with the 17th pick, while Blake was their second-round selection the following year in 2003. Hoping to conjure up some title magic, the Wizards added Baxter to the mix in 2003-04 after he was released mid-season from the Toronto Raptors. It didn’t go well. Baxter played just 12 games for the Wizards and left the league two years later. Blake and Dixon moved on after the 2004-05 season.
Result: A terrible 25-57 (.305) season with all three Terrapins. The 2004-05 Wizards reached the Eastern Conference semifinals with Blake and Dixon coming off the bench.
Duke Grizzlies 2020-21: 3 teammates at once
Players: Grayson Allen, Tyus Jones and Justise Winslow
Led by Jahlil Okafor, the 2014-15 Duke Blue Devils produced eight NBA players, so perhaps it’s no surprise that three of them ended up playing together at the next level. But I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t remember this one.
Winslow and Jones were first-year starters on the starting lineup that defeated Wisconsin, while Allen came off the bench and remained all four years. Despite the loaded roster, the Duke ’15 starting lineup didn’t exactly yield the most inspiring batch of NBA merchandise. Winslow, Jones and Okafor left shortly after the championship and none of them approached star status. Jones, picked 24th overall by Minnesota, has had perhaps the best career of the group, while Allen is also playing a good role as a 3-and-D weapon.
It took a while, but Allen, Jones and Winslow finally came together in a 2020-21 Memphis group led by Ja Morant. Unlike the other Nova Knicks compositions on this list, this one seemed to be more of a fluke than a deliberate attempt to create some devilish magic. Allen and Jones came on the bench as Winslow struggled to stay healthy enough to contribute. Total minutes played together on the court: four. Something tells me the Nova Knicks will get over this with Thibodeau for a long time.
Result: A playoff appearance as bench players.
