The Philadelphia 76ers’ draft-day trade of Mikal Bridges for Zhaire Smith and a future first-round pick is so polarizing that it has some extolling the virtues of its upside and others decrying the loss of an expected contributor for this season and a perceived slight to a beloved local kid.



There’s an emotional component to the trade that is impossible to ignore, and it comes from a variety of angles. First, we tend to overvalue what we know, which applies to Bridges both because of his age (22) and his location. With Bridges having spent his entire basketball life in the Philadelphia area, most 76ers fans have seen him play far more often than they have Smith, a 19-year-old Texas Tech product. Add in the emotional weight of the Bridges story — local kid who played his college ball at the Wells Fargo Center, whose mother works for the Sixers and who got to celebrate for 38 minutes thinking that his dream of playing for the hometown team was coming true...