There is a moment every basketball player imagines. The confetti falls. The trophy comes out. Your teammates — the guys who've had your back through everything — are right there beside you.
Jalen Brunson has lived that moment twice, both times in a Villanova University uniform. Mikal Bridges has lived it twice too, standing right next to him. Josh Hart was there for one of those championship nights, cutting down the nets in 2016 while the other two celebrated again in 2018.
Now, against odds that Hart himself called "almost impossible," all three are together again — this time in New York Knicks uniforms, heading to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.
"The percent chance you're going to be on the same team is very slim," Hart said after the Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals. "It's not done. It's always something you talk about and dream about, but you know reality is it's almost impossible. So the fact it actually came to fruition is super cool."¹
How the Brotherhood Was Built at Villanova
Under head coach Jay Wright, Villanova basketball became one of the defining college programs of the 2010s — a place that developed professional players, cultivated winning cultures, and sent players to the NBA who carried those habits with them.
Brunson arrived at Villanova in 2014. Hart came a year earlier, in 2013. Bridges joined the program in 2015. All three stayed in school for three or more years at a time when the one-and-done pipeline was pulling top recruits straight to the NBA after a single season. That choice — to stay, to develop, to be part of something bigger — is part of what makes their story unusual in today's NBA landscape.¹
The championships followed. In 2016, with Brunson as a sophomore and Hart as a junior, Villanova defeated North Carolina on one of the most iconic shots in college basketball history — Kris Jenkins' buzzer-beater. Hart was a key contributor. Brunson was learning what it meant to win at the highest level.
Two years later, with Brunson now the consensus National Player of the Year and Bridges projected as a lottery pick, Villanova won again — this time demolishing Michigan 79–62 in the title game, with Bridges averaging 17.8 points and 5.4 rebounds across the tournament.² DiVincenzo, who has since departed for the Minnesota Timberwolves, came off the bench to score 31 points in the championship game and was named the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player.
The Path From Villanova to Madison Square Garden
Getting here was not a straight line for any of them.
| Player | Draft Year | Pick | Drafted By | Path to Knicks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jalen Brunson | 2018 | 33rd overall | Dallas Mavericks | Signed as free agent, 2022 |
| Josh Hart | 2017 | 30th overall | Utah Jazz (traded to Lakers) | Traded to Knicks, Feb. 2023 |
| Mikal Bridges | 2018 | 10th overall | Philadelphia 76ers (traded to Suns) | Traded from Nets, summer 2024 |
Despite Brunson being the 2018 college national player of the year, he wasn't even a first-round pick. Hart went 30th. Bridges, the highest of the three at tenth overall, was immediately traded by the team that drafted him. None of their individual paths to New York were inevitable or easy.
Brunson arrived first, signing with the Knicks in 2022 and quickly establishing himself as one of the Eastern Conference's premier guards. Hart came next, mid-season in 2023, slotting in as the energy-and-hustle engine the team badly needed. Then came the big swing: in the summer of 2024, the Knicks traded five first-round picks to the Brooklyn Nets to acquire Bridges.
That trade was immediately controversial. Critics argued the Knicks had dramatically overpaid for a player without an All-Star Game on his résumé. The front office saw something different: a player they knew could be trusted with their best friend alongside him.
"He didn't call Leon [Rose] and say, 'Yo, this is the trade package!'" Hart said. "He got put into this situation, and he hit the ground running. We wouldn't be in this situation without him."²
The Bridges Question — Now Answered
The debate over the Bridges trade lingered through two regular seasons, and it flared again in the first round of these playoffs when Bridges struggled and was effectively benched in the second halves of two games against Atlanta. It looked, briefly, like the argument was being settled in the wrong direction.
Then Bridges rediscovered himself — and did it on the biggest stage.
Since that rough two-game stretch, Bridges has shot 68.4 percent from the floor on 11.4 field goal attempts per game across nine games, with nearly two steals per night.² In Game 3 of the ECF, with the series against Cleveland effectively on the line, he scored 22 points on 11-of-15 shooting, adding six rebounds, three steals and two blocks in a performance that silenced every lingering doubt about whether he was worth what New York gave up.
Late in the Knicks' comeback win in Game 1, it was Bridges who dribbled across the floor, stumbled slightly, and hoisted a high-arcing fadeaway three over Evan Mobley's outstretched arm. It went in.
Brunson and Hart: The Foundation
While Bridges has been the redemption story of this postseason, the Knicks don't get here without the other two legs of the Villanova triangle.
Brunson was named the MVP of the Eastern Conference Finals after averaging 25.5 points and 7.8 assists across the series.¹ His 38-point performance in Game 1, engineering a comeback from 22 points down in the fourth quarter, set the tone for everything that followed. He is the unquestioned leader of this team — the player opponents build their game plans around, and the one his teammates defer to when the game is on the line.
"There's no other guard that I want to be [with] besides JB," Bridges said after the series.¹
Hart's role is harder to quantify but impossible to overlook. He posted a playoff career-high 26 points in Game 2, shooting 5-of-11 from three-point range in a 109–93 Knicks win that put Cleveland in a hole it never climbed out of.³ He is averaging 42-plus minutes per game in this postseason — the first Knick to average that kind of workload in a single postseason since 2004.⁴ His rebounding, his defense, his refusal to come out of games even when the outcome is settled — all of it is the living embodiment of what Villanova basketball under Jay Wright was built to produce.
What Winning Would Mean
There is one piece of unfinished business remaining.
The Knicks will face either the San Antonio Spurs or the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals, a series that begins the first week of June. For a franchise that last won the title in 1973, it would end the longest drought in the history of one of the sport's most storied franchises.
The three Villanova players have now won championships at every level they have competed together — conference titles, national championships, and an Eastern Conference crown. The NBA title is the only one left.
"Obviously, these guys have my back, and they've always had it," Brunson said. "I wouldn't change it for the world."¹
In college locker rooms, players dream about playing together forever. They talk about it in the off-season, text each other during the draft, watch each other's games from different cities for years. Almost none of them ever actually get the chance to finish the story together.
These three are still writing theirs.
Footnotes
¹ "Knicks' Villanova Trio Know What They're Trying to Accomplish Together Is 'Almost Impossible'," New York Post, May 26, 2026 — https://nypost.com/2026/05/26/sports/knicks-villanova-trio-in-awe-of-their-almost-impossible-opportunity/
² "Mikal Bridges' Big Performance in the Conference Finals," The Athletic / NBA.com, May 2026 — https://www.nba.com/news/mikal-bridges-big-performance-conference-finals
³ "Josh Hart Stats Today: How Knicks Role Player's Bounce-Back Was the Difference in Game 2," Yahoo Sports, May 2026 — https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/josh-hart-stats-today-knicks-030755297.html
⁴ Josh Hart Stats and Bio, Basketball Reference — https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/hartjo01.html
⁵ "Josh Hart Has Mikal Bridges Impressed as He Discusses Amazing 'Almost Impossible' Moment," Hardwood Heroics, May 2026 — https://hardwoodheroics.com/josh-hart-mikal-bridges-impressed-villanova/
⁶ Villanova 2018 NCAA Championship Preview, Press Reader — https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-reporter-lansdale-pa/20180330/281878708928461