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These audacious trades keep happening -- teams trading three, four, five first-round picks for one player, the latest being the New York Knicks finally cashing in their diligently acquired stockpile in exchange for a 27-year-old crosstown rival who has made precisely zero All-Star games in (yup) Villanova University champion alumnus Mikal Bridges.
We didn't use to see these kinds of almost-all-in megadeals. In July 2022, after pick-heavy deals for Dejounte Murray (a onetime All-Star, and an injury replacement at that) and Rudy Gobert, research from both Basketball Reference and ESPN's Kevin Pelton found there had been seven trades in the preceding decade involving one team dealing away at least three future first-round picks -- and that those seven accounted for one more such trade than had occurred in the entirety of NBA history from the ABA-NBA merger through 2012.