An NBA trade whopper AND a birthday

The real celebrations will wait until July -- until after the bulk of the NBA's offseason business plays out -- but we really just did make it to birthday No. 3 for this basketball publication

For everyone reading along and contributing to this community, Tuesday marked NBA Draft Eve and featured a league-shaking trade agreement that will send Mikal Bridges from Brooklyn to the Nets' hated Madison Square Garden neighbors for a monster amount of Knicks draft capital they couldn’t say no to.

For your humble newsletter curator, with or without the wild transactional activity that pushed publication of this edition of the newsletter way later than we hoped for, Tuesday doubled as a special anniversary.

I realize no one is keeping track of this stuff besides us, but The Stein Line officially launched on June 25, 2021, meaning that Tuesday stunningly tipped off Year 4 for us on this platform.

We're three full years old!

Birthday decorations from Amazon that I did consider buying but settled for merely displaying this way.

In a Numbers Game-inspired factoid that surprised even me: It also means that, by the time we all emerge from next season's All-Star break, I will have somehow been writing here — directly to you on what was once a deliciously blank canvas that is now home to more than 600 articles in my archive — for as long as I spent at The New York Times.

As I said last year at this time: There is simply too much NBA chaos going on, with the draft about to make its debut as a two-night extravaganza on Wednesday and Thursday and free agency officially starting Sunday at 6 PM ET, to print the broader piece that a Substack publisher normally might on this occasion to reflect on our first three years of operation and look ahead to Year 4. I will assemble and publish that piece as soon as I can in July once we get beyond the full-speed mayhem of the NBA Transaction Game that just helped the Knicks establish themselves as perhaps the foremost challenger in the Eastern Conference to the newly crowned champions from Boston.

What I can reiterate immediately is what a privilege it continues to be to cover the NBA for you and with you in this independent manner.

My Portland-based colleague John Canzano just wrote a wonderful piece on what this independent publishing experience is like for old newspapers guys like us while attending the annual Associated Press Sports Editors convention over the weekend in Charlotte. I badly wanted to be there, too, because, like Canzano, I was fortunate enough to win a first-place APSE plaque — my first first-place finish ever in the annual writing competition — for my breaking news coverage on this little Substack of Mark Cuban's stunning sale of a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks last November. Yet I couldn't attend the festivities to collect the hardware in person because the weekend before the NBA Draft is just way too important to leave the desk. I work for you guys and the response to my two weekend columns made it clear that I was wise to prioritize coverage of the leaguewide machinations that mesmerize us every June after the Finals.

All good. I will gleefully revel in that plaque's arrival when it reaches me by mail.

And I will celebrate The Stein Line's birthday quietly until it can be done with more gusto in a few weeks.

Please allow me, for now, to just say thanks thanks THANKS again for being on this ride with me. The goal, as always, is providing you with informed, accurate and detailed NBA news, storytelling, opinion and historical perspective ... with occasional tales of soccer, tennis, travel, coffee consumption and LOTS of interactivity thrown in. I know you love #thiscrazyleague as much as me and this newsletter, along with the Substack app, keeps us connected in ways never before possible, delivering everything out of my notebook right to you.

There will be more to come on the fun we've already had and what looms in the future. Let's get back now to the crucial 10 days (or so) ahead with the draft and free agency in front of us.

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The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter with both Free and Paid subscriptions available … and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of #thisleague. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.

As a reminder: Tuesday editions, on this and every Newsletter Tuesday, go out free to anyone who signs up, just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation.

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Chatter Box

Free agency forecasts for Paul George, DeMar DeRozan and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.

Lots of reaction to JJ Redick's introductory news conference as head coach of the Lakers.

All that and more is covered in the latest #thisleague UNCUT podcast I recorded alongside Turner Sports' Chris Haynes. The episode dropped Tuesday morning.

Check it out here:

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Numbers Game

🏀 1983

New York's trade to acquire Mikal Bridges from Brooklyn is the first Knicks-and-Nets trade, as tracked by former Nets executive Bobby Marks of ESPN, since way back in June 1983. In that deal, New York acquired Len Elmore from the then-New Jersey Nets for a 1984 second-round pick.

🏀 39-5

Bridges combined with Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo to post a 39-5 record in the 44 games they played together at Villanova, according to ESPN Stats & Info's Matt Williams.

Graphic assembled by RealGM.

🏀 6

Hat-tip to my fellow Substacker Tom Haberstroh for being the first person I saw point out that the Nets managed to acquire five future first-round picks for Bridges — and it's actually six when you tally up four unprotected firsts from the Knicks (2025, 2027, 2029, 2031), another 2025 first-rounder via Milwaukee and an unprotected pick swap in 2028 — mere days after Chicago traded Alex Caruso to Oklahoma City for Josh Giddey without getting a single future first- or second-round pick added to the deal.

🏀 0

Bridges, remember, has zero career All-Star appearances in six NBA seasons.

🏀 2

A year after San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama became the first French player to be selected No. 1 overall in the NBA draft, Zaccharie Risacher and Alexandre Sarr are poised to become the first two Frenchmen to be selected in the top five of the same draft on Wednesday night.

🏀 14

There were a record 14 French players on Opening Night rosters this past season. The number is likely to approach 20 in 2024-25.

🏀 12

Wondering how the last 12 NBA coaches without any prior coaching experience fared as we prepare for JJ Redick's tenure in Lakerland? Data visualization specialist Lev Akabas of Sportico recently shared this informative chart going all the way back to Dan Issel's hiring in Denver in 1992:

🏀 14

Another Akabas Special: 14 of the NBA's last 18 champions, including the newly crowned Celtics, paid the luxury tax.

🏀 2008

Interesting revelation recently from Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo: He wasn't paying close attention to the Greek national team when it last qualified for the Olympics in 2008 because he didn't pay much attention to the sport in those days since he hadn't yet committed to playing basketball as his primary focus until 2009. Antetokounmpo recently told reporters in his native Greece that he first tried basketball in 2007 but took a break from it before dedicating himself to the game two years later.

🏀 7

Kristaps Porziņģis, who will undergo surgery soon to repair the left leg injuries he sustained in Game 2 of the NBA Finals against Dallas, played in only seven of Boston's 19 playoff games this spring.

🏀 57

Porziņģis played 57 regular-season games in his first season as a Celtic.

🏀 7

Detroit is about to hire its seventh coach since Tom Gores became the Pistons' owner before the 2011-12 season. The first six: Lawrence Frank, Maurice Cheeks, John Loyer, Stan Van Gundy, Dwane Casey and Monty Williams.

🏀 2

The Pistons have made just two playoff appearances in Gores' 13 seasons in charge and got swept both times. The club's last playoff victory over any kind was in 2008.