The New York Knicks looked to Villanova University for inspiration as it put its team together for this year, and things have paid off in a big way. The team has made moves over the last two seasons to acquire Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Donte DiVincenzo — all of whom were members of the 2016 Wildcats team that won a national title — and as a result, New York is 42-28 and has legitimate aspirations of winning the Eastern Conference.
While this is happening, Mikal Bridges is over in Brooklyn on a Nets team that isn’t doing especially well. The Nets are 26-45 and would need an all-time miracle to make the postseason. Bridges, who was a member of the 2018 Villanova championship squad alongside Brunson and DiVincenzo, has had a solid season, but it just hasn’t worked with him as the No. 1 option in Brooklyn. And over in Manhattan, Hart can’t help but compare this to a meme from SpongeBob SquarePants.
“It’s like that SpongeBob meme when Squidward is looking out the window and he sees SpongeBob and Patrick having fun,” Hart said, according to Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News. “[Mikal] is Squidward.”
It is an unbelievable line by Hart, in large part because everyone knows exactly what he is talking about and it sums up how things are going in New York pretty well. But who knows? Maybe there’s some path that leads to Bridges ending up on the Knicks that turns all of the Villanova guys into a different, more optimistic SpongeBob meme.