We should have seen this coming.
In 2022, the New York Knicks made a small trade that seemingly signaled a bigger plan. About a month before the trade deadline, they acquired Cam Reddish from the Atlanta Hawks to pair him with former Duke teammate and then-Knicks guard RJ Barrett. People from around the league (including yours truly) wondered if this was the earlier move the movement. That is, to ultimately lure Zion Williamson to New York and complete the Duke triumvirate that won the ACC Championship and ultimately reached the Elite 8 of the NCAA Tournament in 2019.
We were dead wrong. We didn’t know what Knicks CEO Leon Rose and head coach Tom Thibodeau were planning. We should have set our sights higher, because the point is: That Duke team did not win an NCAA championship.
On Tuesday night, the Knicks traded Bojan Bogdanović, five first-round picks and a first-round swap to acquire former Brooklyn Nets wing Mikal Bridges, a package that somehow undermines the Knicks’ bold plan. By acquiring Bridges, they appear to be recreating Villanova’s NCAA championship squads of 2016 and 2018. Bridges will now join former Wildcat teammates Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo as they attempt to duplicate their success at the collegiate level.
The Knicks will now pursue an NBA championship with four players from the same NCAA championship teams. Former Villanova head coach Jay Wright’s reaction to the trade spoke volumes about the rarity of what awaits 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 collegiate camaraderie. The partnership between Brunson, Hart and DiVincenzo helped them win 50 games last season and reach the semifinals of the Eastern Conference. Now they’re diving back into the well.
It got me thinking: Has the Nova Knicks ever happened before? An NBA team essentially trying to follow up on an NCAA championship 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, they represent the most college teammates on an NCAA championship team who play for every team on the same NBA team in the modern era.
Actually, delete that. It binds from last season team that didn’t have Mikal Bridges, but did have Ryan Arcidiacono.
If they add free agent Arcidiacano to the roster, they will make history, with five collegiate championship teammates suiting up for the same NBA team.
Here are four other iterations since 1990 that have seen as many as three NCAA champion teammates play together — and what, if anything, they can tell us about this group’s possible fate.
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 stated that “Larry Bird doesn’t walk through that door,” but actually the entire Kentucky Wildcats team does. Pitino had won the 1996 NCAA championship at Kentucky and then took the job with the Celtics with the audacious ambition of raising another Boston flag with an almost exclusively Wildcats roster. As many as nine Wildcats from the 1996 title team went on to play in the NBA, and five of them walked through the Celtics’ doors at one point or another in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
There were no secrets here. Although he inherited Walker, who was drafted eighth overall in the 1996 draft, Pitino and the Celtics drafted Mercer sixth overall and traded for McCarty prior to the 1997-98 season to bring the total to three players from that 1996 team. to take. For the next five seasons after ’97-98, the Celtics employed Tony Delk and Wayne Turner, but never more than three at a time. (Delk actually arrived after Pitino resigned in 2001.)
Pitino’s reign as coach of the Celtics was considered a disaster. However, there is one key difference between that Celtics team and this version of the Knicks: Jay Wright does not coach the Knicks. Tom Thibodeau won’t be accused of playing favorites like Pitino, and that will likely make a big difference in the Knicks locker room.
Result: Not a single winning season 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 quite 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’s not a perfect match for what we’re going for here, but I guess there are worse things than stealing UConn title teams for talent (a 2024 draft preview?).
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 winning its own title, and later boasted six NBAers: Gordon, Emeka Okafor, Villanueva, Josh Boone, Hilton Armstrong and Marcus Williams. Gordon and Okafor were the only ones who left the school immediately after the cutting of the nets, the rest came later.
Neither Gordon nor Villanueva was drafted by the Pistons, but they both reunited in free agency in the summer of 2009, signing deals with Joe Dumar’s Pistons — a team that was rolling after the Flip Saunders era. The Detroit Huskies era was ultimately forgotten in the two seasons under 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 recruit all his guys to the Celtics. That’s what the Maryland Wizards were like. The 2002 Maryland Terrapins produced four NBA players after beating Indiana for the NCAA title, and three of them played for the local NBA team, the Wizards, almost immediately. The only one who didn’t — Chris Wilcox — played 11 years in the league, but never with the D.C. team.
The Wizards were undeterred 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 of that title magic, the Wizards added Baxter to the mix in 2003-04 after he was fired by the Toronto Raptors midseason. It didn’t go well. Baxter played only twelve games for the Wizards and was out of the league two years later. Blake and Dixon moved on after the 2004-05 season.
Result: A terrible 25-57 (.305) season for 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 a time
The players: Grayson Allen, Tyus Jones and Justise Winslow
Led by Jahlil Okafor, the 2014-15 Duke Blue Devils produced a whopping 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 forgot this one.
Winslow and Jones were freshmen starters on the title team that defeated Wisconsin, while Allen came off the bench and stayed all four years. Despite the loaded roster, Duke’s ’15 title team didn’t exactly produce the most inspiring bunch of NBA products. Winslow, Jones and Okafor all left early after the championship, and none of them approached star status. Jones, drafted 24th overall by Minnesota, has had perhaps the best career of the group, while Allen also figures to be a nice 3-and-D weapon.
It took a while, but Allen, Jones, and Winslow eventually reunited for a 2020-21 Memphis group led by Ja Morant. Unlike the other Nova Knicks compilations on this list, this one seemed more of a coincidence than a deliberate attempt to conjure some devilish magic. Allen and Jones stepped in off the bench, while Winslow struggled to stay healthy enough to contribute. Total minutes played together on the court: four. Something tells me the Nova Knicks are going to surpass that by quite a bit under Thibodeau.
Result: One playoff appearance as bench players.
