Suns' Monty Williams Cried After Losing Bridges, Johnson in Kevin Durant, Nets Trade

Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams said he cried after the team dealt Mikal Bridges and Cameron Johnson to the Brooklyn Nets in a Feb. 9 blockbuster deal that brought back Kevin Durant.

"If I was going to lose Cam and Mikal, it better be for Kevin," Williams said to ESPN's Nick Friedell. "You know what I mean? It's like you're crying in one eye and then the other eye is kind of bright."

Williams added: "That's the only time in my coaching that I've cried [after a trade]."

Williams has been the Suns' head coach since 2019, the same year Phoenix selected Johnson with the 11th pick in the draft. The coach's first year in town marked Bridges' second season with the Suns.

It's certainly understandable that Williams would get emotional after seeing a pair of players he worked with for three-plus years leave town. Those two were also key cogs on the 2020-21 Western Conference champion Suns, who made the NBA Finals for the first time in 28 years.

Williams' comments dropped in a piece about the Nets' optimism for a new era led by Bridges after its superteam experiment failed. Bridges has developed into a bona fide star in Brooklyn, averaging 26.1 points per game since the trade.

Phoenix has fared quite well since the deal, going 9-1 (including playoffs) with Durant on the floor. Still, the news of the trade obviously hit the Suns hard, with Williams providing more insight.

"None of us went back to bed that night," Williams said. "I called Mikal, I called Cam, and they had been up with the players."

The Suns were in the middle of a five-game Eastern Conference road trip and scheduled to play the Atlanta Hawks later the following evening when the trade went down.

Bridges found out about the deal on Twitter while staying with the Suns at the Four Seasons. He got a call from his agent before Johnson called him too.

"I'm in the hallway, and this is like 1 a.m., so everybody's in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops," Johnson told Friedell. "Everybody's ready for bed, and now everybody's in the hallway. And then he comes through the elevator, so we're already all in the hallway."

Williams woke up a few hours after the deal was completed, and he was greeted by a litany of texts and missed calls informing him of the move. It was a tough moment for Williams—Friedell noted that Johnson and Bridges had become like family to him.

Ultimately, the deal was done, but it also led to Williams being reunited with Durant. The two were together on the 2015-16 Oklahoma City Thunder, with whom Williams was an associate head coach.