THE SEASIN OF THE NOVA KNICKS

LIKE SO MANY College friends, Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo, and Mikal Bridges were resigned to going their separate ways after school.

They'd be able to look back on some incredible times together, at least: All four were members of Villanova's championship-winning 2016 basketball team, and Brunson, DiVincenzo, and Bridges won a second title in 2018. They'd grown close off the court too: They had lived in the Nova dorms, shared meals in the dining hall, partied together.

But all four also had their hearts set on the NBA, where fewer than 600 players touch the floor over the course of a typical season, as members of 30 different teams in 28 different cities. Given the randomness of the NBA Draft to start, and the difficulty of building a sustained career as a professional basketball player, the idea that even two of them would wind up on the same team wasn't worth indulging.

"It's something that you don't even really talk about, because you know it's impossible. It's not going to happen," Hart told me. "So I can't even say, yeah, we joked about it, or we talked about it, because you don't, you never.... You know the likelihood of that happening is slim to none."