It Was A Subtle But Effective Deadline Day For The Brooklyn Nets
That a New Zealander is calling the shots for the Brooklyn Nets makes them immediately interesting to a kiwi site such as ours… but the Nets are fascinating far beyond national ties. People who know tell you that there are three ways to build a team into a contender: you draft a superstar, you trade for a superstar or you sign a superstar in free agency. Pretty much, you don’t win a title without one – just look at the list of Finals MVPs. Andre Iguodala stands out there but remember he was playing alongside Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
The Brooklyn Nets don’t have a superstar. They’re out there trying to find one, except… they don’t control their draft picks, they have nothing much worth trading (nothing that’ll hook a big fish anyway) and the best players aren’t even gonna consider playing for a largely talentless roster that might struggle to win many more than a dozen games this season. This is what makes the Nets such a crazy case: they have to do this thing from absolute scratch.
Marks has had one offseason to work with so far and most of that was about clearing the dinner table. Getting rid of guys who were of no use or value and building the foundations of something akin to the San Antonio Spurs team culture that was such a massive part of Marks’ appeal to this franchise as GM. Kenny Atkinson as coach was the first major step, aside from a few shuffling of assets, but there wasn’t much that could be done with the roster other than a few sly free agency deals. This trade deadline was arguably the first legit opportunity that the Nets have had to make some genuine moves to improve the team… and on a very low key note they’ve probably done that.
The first thing they did leading into the trade deadline was to flip Bojan Bogdanovic to the Washington Wizards. The Bog has been one of their most reliable performers this season, the 27 year old wing scoring a career-high 14.2 points per game shooting 35.7% from deep. Nothing dramatic but it’s about as much as they have to offer and the Wizards were looking hard for a player that could shoot off the bench. You’ve gotta figure that you put this guy outside John Wall and Bradley Beal and that triple percentage will go up with the extra space he’ll be afforded.
The Nets also gave up Chris McCullough in the deal although he’s hardly played lately so that’s no worry. In return they get Marcus Thornton and Andrew Nicholson, as well as a lottery-protected first round pick for the 2017 draft. The protection means that the Nets only get the pick if the Wizards make the playoffs but that looks almost certain with the way they’re trucking lately. The Wizards just got ever so slightly better too.
As far as the Wizards are concerned, their 18-5 record since the turn of the year has given them reason to believe they can contend in the East and with Kevin Love’s injury and the well-aired complaints about the Cavaliers’ depth, they’re not the only ones. The Boston Celtics, Atlanta Hawks and Indiana Pacers all threw their names around in trade talks while the Toronto Raptors moved earlier to acquire Serge Ibaka as well as getting P.J. Tucker on deadline day. It’s an arms race all of a sudden and the Nets, as sellers, have a market to deal in.
Bogdanovic only has this year left on his contract but is a restricted free agent so if he goes well then the Wiz can keep control of him for a qualifying offer worth $4.47m. Should The Bog decline that then the Wizards still maintain the right to match any offer he receives. The Nets know all about this – their masterplan last offseason was to go after young restricted dudes like Allen Crabbe and Tyler Johnson… though their current teams matched those offers and the Nets came away empty handed – which maybe isn’t such a bad thing to keep some of that flexibility into the future rather than risk it on two middling prospects, Crabbe is scoring 10.4 ppg on 45.9% shooting this season and Johnson is scoring 13.8 ppg on 42.5% shooting, each playing around 29-30 mins a night.
So little risk for the Wizards, who also offload a couple of unnecessary lower-roster blokes. (As for McCullough, don’t worry about him. He’s got some potential and he’s lit it up in the D-League but any production he gives Washington will be a bonus).
Thornton and Nicholson combine for fewer points per game this season than Bogdanovic and neither has been a regular on the court in 2016-17. Those fellas offer a sketchy impact for the Nets. Thornton hasn’t played since the first week of January, he’s shooting 40% from the field this season so don’t expect much… but then the Nets clearly weren’t expecting much either because they waived him within a day. He was gonna be a free agent after the season anyway and funnily enough he used to play for the Nets back in 2013-14 – the season they traded for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, sacrificing damn near all their picks and digging the hole they find themselves in now.
Nicholson still has a few years on his contract, which is a complication. He might become a valuable rotation option as a power forward who scored 6.9 points with 3.6 rebounds shooting 36% from deep in less than 15 minutes a game last season with the Orlando Magic. Or with an already stacked power forward rotation in Brooklyn maybe he won’t at all. Wait and see. The things is though, the Canadian national team player has three more seasons on his deal, one he signed last summer with Washington. Not an insignificant contract either – he’s earning around $6m this season and including a player option for 2019-20 he’s owed almost $20m over the next three campaigns. Considering he’s only played a handful of minutes recently after falling almost completely out of Scott Brooks’ rotation, his was a contract the Wizards were desperate to get rid of, especially with Otto Porter needing to be re-signed in the offseason.
And in the Nets they found someone happy to take that contract. The Nets don’t need Nicholson and he’s hardly gonna be the difference maker for them, even if that contract probably means they have to invest some minutes in him. However the Nets are also below the salary cap floor so it’s helpful in that regard and they’ll still have $10.2m in cap space after all this and could have up to $30m to work with in free agency. Taking Nicholson was a favour to Washington. In return, the Wizards sweetened the deal with that first round pick and that’s what the Nets were really after.
The player trade-off weakens the worst team in the NBA. But it means they get a second first round pick in the draft. It’s a fallacy that they don’t have any picks, they didn’t trade their 2017 first rounder to the Celtics but the Celtics do have the rights to a pick swap – a right that they’ll 100% choose to enact. It’ll be the first overall selection if the lottery balls play to the current odds. The Nets lose that but they do get the Celtics’ first rounder which should fall in the high 20s. It won’t get them free choice upon the fabled 2017 Draft Class but two late first round picks are better than nothing.
Nothing is about what it cost them to take K.J. McDaniels off of the Houston Rockets’ books on deadline day too. All it cost them was a trade exception and in return they get a 24 year old wing earning $3.33m this season. McDaniels isn’t nearly as useful to the Rockets as he might be to the Nets, he has the potential to be a great defender but is a career 29.2% shooter from three and on the offensive juggernaut Rockets (who just traded for Lou Williams) should be desperate for some extra outside defence, especially after letting Corey Brewer go as well, but then those guys need to be able to hit shots and KJMD ain’t doing that. At least not yet, because on the Nets he’ll get an opportunity to develop which he wasn’t gonna get in Houston. His jump shot is weak but it has improved and his length and athleticism mean that if he can fix that shot he’ll be a very useful bloke. And they got him for nothing – McDaniels walks on into Bogdanovic’s role and is under contract for another year with a team option.
That thing about the Nets having to be creative to find players who can help them, either to win or as trade bait? This is what they’re talking about. The Nets just signed a guy for nothing who may or may not develop into an asset for them and they did it at no risk.
There’s a possibility that the Nets get better after the break, not so much because McDaniels is an immediate improvement of Bogdanovic or that Nicholson can start making that contract look like a bargain but because they’re finally getting towards something resembling health. Specifically Jeremy Lin, their major offseason signing, is back and ready to go having only played only 300 minutes thso season – missing 44 games. Only 179 of those minutes have come with Brook Lopez also on the court, the Nets two best players unable to get going yet.
Yeah, Brook Lopez… the Nets’ one serious offering into the sacrificial trade fires. Based on what everyone had been saying, they had no intention of actively shopping him around but they would have accepted a proper offer if they’d gotten one. Initially that meant two first round picks but in the wake of the Boogie Cousins move it sounds like they would have settled for a first and second, probably with a player in there too. Rumours have it that there were teams willing to take a punt on Lopez for one first but they didn’t get an offer they felt they couldn’t refuse and Lopez, scoring a career best 20.8 points per game and emerging as a three point option as well, is still very useful to this team with another year on his contract. Considering that other big men to have been moved on in the last week haven’t exactly drawn glowing praise for what their teams got in return, that seems fair enough.
Still a shade under the salary floor (roughly $800k), the Nets have a full 15 man roster but it’s not exactly full of depth so there are others that they may wish to waive. If they do then there’s a chance they get involved in the waiver claim parade, claiming the odd unwanted contract, though that’s not something to really expect of them. Most likely they sit tight, happy with what they’ve done in the last couple days.
By the way, Sean Marks’ predecessor as Nets GM was Billy King who had the job for around six years. With McCollough getting traded, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson is the only one of his draft picks still playing at the club. Draft picks are clearly the thing they’re working for here. As Marks says, first round picks get you flexibility. You can trade up or down, you can flip them for players and you can cash them in for quality young players on cheap rookie contracts. With the upcoming draft supposedly stacked with serious NBA prospects, having two selections, albeit in the 20-30 range, is huge for a team that started out with damn near nothing.