NetsDaily Off-Season Report - 11
We’ll be updating the Nets’ off-season weekly, with bits and pieces of information, gossip, and everything in between to help fans get ready for ... anything. We normally post our OSR on the weekend, but we figured we’d give it a few more days for things to percolate. After all, free agency began at 6:00 p.m. ET on Sunday. Surely, the Nets would do something in the opening days of free agency. Alas nothing. So here we are, three days late. We finally have something to work with: the completion of the first Nets-Knick trade in 41 years, the first time the two teams had done anything more than exchange pleasantries at the NBA Lottery. It won’t be complete till Saturday, but thanks to leaks galore, the final design of the deal is out there.
A week ago, the Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks shocked the basketball establishment not just because one team (the Nets) had pivoted from its seeming resistance to trade its star and other (the Knicks) was continuing down the road they’ve been on since Leon Rose took over: an incremental, non-sentimental drive for the prize.
Whether you were opposed to the Nets original strategy — using Bridges as a lure for other stars — or wanted a tear-it-down rebuild, aka tank, the trade was stunning.
Mikal Bridges, never an All-Star but a player whose durability and defense, not to mention his popularity, was near legendary, goes to the Knicks along with Keita Bates-Diop. In return, the Nets get former Bojan Bogdanovic (who Marks traded away in 2017), four unprotected Knicks’ first round picks; a Knicks first round swap, also unprotected: a Bucks’ lightly protected (1-4) first rounder as well as a Knicks’ second rounder Shake Milton and Mamadi Diakite. We can all debate who won.
At the same time, the Nets made a more complicated deal with the Rockets that got Brooklyn back its 2026 first rounder back and more importantly it “extinguished” the Rockets swap rights to their 2025 first. (That’s NBA language.) Both drafts are viewed as very good, but 2025 is viewed as possibly historic. Brooklyn could have five picks in the first 35 to 40 picks, four firsts and a high second.
The Rockets in turn got the right to swap their own first-round pick or the Thunder’s first-round pick for Phoenix’s first-round pick, the Suns 2027 first-round pick, rights to the two most favorable of Mavs’, Suns’ and Rockets’ first-round picks in 2029.
After all that, here’s our best estimate of the Nets first round draft picture going forward:
2025 - Their own
2025 - New York Knicks (unprotected)
2025 - Phoenix Suns (Houston Rockets right to swap)
2025 - Milwaukee Bucks (protected 1-4)
2026 - Their own
2027 - Their own (Houston Rockets right to swap)
2027 - New York Knicks (unprotected)
2027 - Philadelphia 76ers (protected 1-8)
2028 - Their own
2028 - Nets right to swap with New York Knicks
2029 - Their own
2029 - New York Knicks (unprotected)
2029 - Phoenix Suns or Dallas Mavericks (better to Rockets; Rockets right to swap other)
2030 -Their own
2031 - Their own
2031 - New York Knicks (unprotected)
The Nets also gained a second in 2025 and gave up a second to the Knicks. (It’s more complicated than that, but it’s a holiday so enjoy yourself rather than getting into the details.) That’s 15 firsts and a first round swap plus another 11 seconds over seven years.
But while the draft haul got the headlines, it’s the second part of what is now a deep rebuild that’s likely to be the more significant piece going forward: cap space. We won’t know how much until Marks finishes dealing, but the best estimate is around $60 to $80 million.
There are multiple rumors from credible sources that Marks is also seeking deals for two players whose contracts extend past next season: Cameron Johnson who has four years and $70+ million left on his deal and Dorian Finney-Smith who will earn $14.9 million next season and has a player option of $15.4 million on the books in 2025-26. It would be surprising if both are on the team’s roster come October.
The cap space will be needed if the tank is to be shortened, perhaps to one or two years as Brian Lewis, in his reporting Tuesday, wrote:
[S]o far, neither Nets owner Joe Tsai nor general manager Sean Marks has tipped his hand, either publicly or privately.
But agents and league executives who’ve spoken with The Post are reading the tea leaves. And those leaves are showing more of a painful-but-short strategy than the death-by-a-thousand cuts misery the Pistons have been going through.
There are risks down each path.
Indeed, a lot could go wrong. Detroit has been in a rebuild for five years without little to show for It. The owner, Tom Gores, has changed virtually everything about the Pistons since taking over, from strategy to GM to head coach. Virtually no one thinks they’ll escape the lottery. And although the Sacramento Kings and Minnesota Timberwolves are in decent shape now, they took more than a decade of losing to get there.
It is unlikely the Nets will face a similar fate. They play in New York City which continues to be a big lure whether you’re in the NBA or any other entertainment business. Kevin Durant may have asked out of Brooklyn, but his businesses are still domiciled in Manhattan. Indeed, New York should be more of a lure to superstars than to young players.
There are also issues that aren’t discussed much but need be. Putting aside New York’s everlasting magnetism, are the Brooklyn Nets, the organization, still attractive to superstars after four franchise players — Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, James Harden and now Mikal Bridges — all asked out. Their individual rationales may be different, but FOUR excellent NBA players, three of them guaranteed Hall of Famers, saw the Nets as a bad situation for them. That is unprecedented.
Players talk. What are they saying about ownership and management? What’s the franchise’s rep now?
Joe Tsai and Sean Marks publicly and privately express no concerns about superstars desire to play on their team. Julia Koch and family didn’t back out of their agreement to pay an astronomically high price for a 15% stake within days of the team’s decision to pivot. The Kochs you would think knew about the pivot and trades. After all, the sale of the stake has been in the works for months and majority owners are duty bound to tell minority owners what’s going on. (Indeed, Joe Tsai was sitting with Julia Koch and David Koch Jr. the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup the night the news broke. In the third quarter, he excused himself. we were told, to find a quiet place at UBS Arena to go over the finer points of the trade,)
There also big jobs to be filled in various nooks and crannies of HSS Training Center, topped by the assistant GM. How easily will they be filled and will it matter in the rebuild? At the Jordi Fernandez press conference, Marks mentioned, unsolicited, that B.J. Johnson. who’s run the Nets drafts the last four years as Senior Director of College Scouting & Player Evaluation, is someone who could fill the job. That was April 24 and still no announcement.
One NBA insider said with the losses of Jeff Peterson, the assistant GM; Matt Tellem, vice president of strategy and capology; Ryan Gisriel, director of basketball operations and J.R. Holden, director of scouting operations and Long Island Nets GM etc, the Nets are currently being run by a “skeleton crew.” That seemed a bit much. We don’t know if some jobs have been filled just not announced and by who?
Significantly as well, there have been rumblings — not denied by insiders — that the performance staff which has basically remained intact over the last seven years and has had a great reputation among players will face changes.
The one place where we have already seen change is a good example of how team’s direction matters in personnel choices. The coaching staff didn’t just change at the top with Fernandez. The nine-man staff is about development, development, development. Assistants who had experience winning in the NBA were scotched. Much younger development types replaced them.
Maybe we should have paid more attention to that — and Joe Tsai’s comments about “sustainability” being the franchise’s top priority. Were they signals? We don’t know when the “pivot” took place. It appears to have come together quickly based on reports we’ve seen. How much of it was about being unable to find a star for Bridges’ co-star in the short term, how much was Bridges growing desire to cross the Brooklyn Bridges (and why) and how much was the simple frustration of trying to win while rebuilding.
Ownership and management were well aware last summer how difficult that would be. Privately, they admitted it. But they continued to reject offers of four and five firsts. Woj said at the deadline the Nets had rejected offers of “four or five” firsts for Bridges, saying they wanted to build around him rather than move him. Others have reported that the Knicks offer had been on the table since the deadline.
There’s also been talk that Tsai is now more involved in things, that the dynamic between he and Marks has shifted slightly if not imperfectively. While some, even on the inside, will speculate, the depth of the relationship is known only to the two men.
In the end, we’ll have to wait till next Summer. But those who worried that the Nets refusal to trade Bridges would hurt his value if the they pivoted, that concern appears to have been needless. Knicks offer — five first rounders and a first round swap — seems to have been the best deal out there. Combined with the Rockets trade of picks, it gives Marks enormous flexibility from this point forward. The fan base seems to have been rejuvenated by the moves. Complaints about the lack of direction have been usurped by talk of who the Nets might get in the Draft and free agency next June.
That’s all good, but...
Oh, the pain
Rebuilding is easier said than done. Every fan wants to see their team win. It is part of the fan DNA, the irrational exuberance factor. We expect a number of fans will drop out either temporarily or permanently, just fed up. Fans don’t rally around losing no matter what the end result. Arena attendance will probably stay near stable. Barclays Center is now established in New York. The Nets sold out 99% of the arena last season despite how bad and boring the team was. TV ratings will likely collapse.
After all, in the 17 years since Kidd left, the New Jersey and Brooklyn Nets have won two playoff series, in 2014 and 2022, gone no farther. They’ve had more head coaches than any other team (when you include interims). It’s not because they didn’t try. Despite spending hundreds of millions in luxury taxes, building a billion dollar arena and a $50 millioin training facility that may be the league’s best, etc., etc., they have just not succeeded.
There will other pain points. There will be even more fans of other teams at Barclays, fewer Nets fans. The two Knick games in Brooklyn will be horrible. At the other extreme there will be fans who vociferously exaggerate the value of their favorite bench guys despite his obvious flaws. Players come and go throughout a losing season. One year during the last rebuild, 26 players wore the Nets uniform. Can’t tell the players without a hotel register.
Conversely, what will happen if by midpoint of the season, they’ve won more than expected. Say 20 games. They won’t be able to tank hard enough for the lottery and won’t be able to win enough to make the play-in. Are we going to boo them for winning, call for Fernandez to be fired because he can’t tank? Failure can take many forms.
These things hurt. We’ve been through more than one. We know one very avid fan who made through 12-70, expecting to wind up with the overall No. 1 pick, the “transformative” point guard, John Wall. Then when the Nets dropped to No. 3, this fan became angry never reaching that same level of fandom again. It didn’t matter that Wall wasn’t so transformative. He just cursed the Nets luck. And as our ProfessorB wrote this week, the lottery isn’t as stacked in favor of the worst team anymore.
If Brooklyn succeeds in rebuilding over a one- or two-year period, that would be great! Sean Marks and Joe Tsai aren’t promising anything ... because they can’t. There are too many variables. Yes, having as many assets as they have will reduce the affect of those variables. Also, the purgatory of 30-52 cannot be dismissed. Better maybe to experience a little bit more hell. There is more than a little logic to that.
Still, the history of rebuilds is normally not measured in months but in years, particularly those as deep as the Nets plan to go. Under Marks the Nets most recent and most impressive rebuild took three years, the Knicks recent one a little longer. Now the Minnesota Timberwolves ... don’t go there.
We will concede that we did not see this coming. The collapse of the Big Three could be seen from miles away. It was slow and ugly in very different and more divisive ways. In many ways this was worse. There was no warning. Bridges and Johnson started off looking like pieces you could build with, very good if not great players without the Big Three’s baggage. Now Bridges is gone, filling his dream of playing with his college buddies. As Pooch wrote, maybe we should have seen Bridges’ rising desire to get out of Dodge. You can’t build around a player who doesn’t want to be here. As for CJ, his departure seems like a given following injuries that laid him low the whole of last season.
Here’s to Nic Claxton
In the middle of all the turmoil this week, Nic Claxton decided he wouldn’t test the margin and return to Brooklyn on a four-year, $100 million. We won’t know the details until at least Saturday when free agents can sign.
Still, the 25-year-old has shown he’s committed to Brooklyn. He is the first homegrown Nets player to sign a $100 million contract while still with the team.
He hasn’t spoken about his deal, but as we noted the day Woj announced the deal, he’s talked about how he feels about Brooklyn and the franchise in the past.
“Brooklyn has really grown on me as a city that I’ve grown to love since I’ve been here these past going on five years. Just everything about it; the fashion, the culture, the pride that the people have here,” Claxton said at season’s end. “We have good fans, but this year we didn’t deliver the way we wanted to. But Brooklyn, the support here definitely means a lot.
“It’s been wild. It’s been chaotic. It’s been a whirlwind, I’m not going to sit here and lie. But as far as me personally, I feel like I’ve really grown a lot from everything. I was able to play with some future Hall of Famers here. I’ve created some really great relationships with teammates. I’ve learned a lot from every single year, I’ve taken something and I’ve grown from that, and at the end of the day, that’s all you can do as a human being. Hopefully the best is yet to come.”
Claxton is now the senior Net in terms of length of service ... and loyalty. Make him the captain
No more Doubting Thomas
In Christianity, “Doubting Thomas” is a phrase that refers to someone who is skeptical and refuses to believe something without direct personal experience. It comes from the Bible story of the Apostle Thomas, one of Jesus’s 12 disciples, and who doubted that Jesus had been resurrected.
Not to get too religious, this also has relevance in our current situation. Cam Thomas, all of 22 years old, is the face of the franchise. There can be no doubt of that. He is him. Some have believed this for a while but the Bridges trade sealed it. And the relative performances of Bridges and Thomas after the All-Star break certainly made a good argument.
This of course is Thomas make-or-break year. He has the ball and the motivation. The Nets are not likely to extend him before October. Instead, a year from now, the 6’3” shooting guard, will likely command a contract of $100 million or more. The debate is over. (Thomas, it should be noted, is switching agents, no doubt in preparations for the next step in his career.)
He will have challenges. Other than Cam Johnson if he stays or Bojan Bogdanovic if he’s healthy, the Nets will not have another player who is a reliable scorer. someone who can take the pressure off Thomas. He will be hunted every night by opponents’ defenses. Life will be tough.
Of course, whenever he’s been given the chance, Thomas has exceeded expectations, averaging 22.5 points a game this past season while improving all aspects of his game. Only two players in the league’s top 40 scorers this season were younger than him, both overall No. 1 selections. One of them, Cade Cunningham, just agreed to a five-year $226 million deal.
He will be part of a Nets kiddie corps whose makeup remains uncertain. Thomas, as noted is 22. So is Day’Ron Sharpe. Nic Claxton is only 25, Jalen Wilson is 23, so is Trendon Watford, assuming he picks up his qualifying offer. Then you have the two teenagers, Noah Clowney and Dariq Whitehead. Jaylen Martin is someone to watch as well. Only 20 years old. the 6’6” wing had three two-way contracts last season, two with the Knicks, one with the Nets.
Final Note
What’s next?
Cam Johnson is reportedly being pursued by a number of teams, led by the Lakers but who also include the Cavaliers and Kings. The 76ers are reportedly very interested in Dorian Finney-Smith who turned 31 on July 4. Bojan Bogdanovic is on a $19.0 million expiring deal and is coming off left foot surgery. He’ll be re-evaluated later this month. Dennis Schroder is also on an expiring at $13.0 million. Expect he will get offers too.
It appears Lonnie Walker IV will not be back. We have heard nothing on Dennis Smith Jr. and Nets. We’ve heard one report that the Heat is interested.
Brooklyn has yet to sign any two-ways. That may change by Friday when Nets are expected to release their Summer League roster. Summer league play begins July 12.
As for Ben Simmons, do not believe that anything is in the works. The Nets would have to give up draft assets now to send him and his $40.3 million away. The Nets, it should be clear by now, are in the accumulation mode now, not dispersal. From everything we hear, the Nets will give him a chance in the early part of the season, hoping he’ll be productive enough to warrant some kind of return at the deadline in February.
In the meantime, just sit back. It ain’t over till it’s over.
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