So, What Are The Nets Up To?

At a time where NBA teams are looking to improve their rosters for the upcoming 2023-24 campaign, the Nets have taken the opposite tack in the first 24-plus hours of free agency, retrenching a bit by abetting the departure of four of the league’s better three-point shooters. Following the Joe Harris trade to Detroit on Friday, guard Patty Mills was also dealt away for non-player compensation from Houston on Saturday while guard Seth Curry (Dallas) and forward Yuta Watanabe (Phoenix) signed elsewhere in the open market. Harris, Curry, and Mills rank fourth, sixth, and 86^th, respectively, among the league’s all-time leaders in three-point field goal percentage while Watanabe would have ranked fifth in the category last season if he qualified.

Aside from Kyle Korver going on to become the league’ 10^th-best career three-point marksmen, this isn’t a repeat of the 2003 offseason, when the then New Jersey Nets traded Korver, their No. 51 overall pick, for cash that was partially used to purchase a copy/fax machine. That team was coming off an NBA Finals season and would again be playoff bound.

No, this iteration, still reeling from the destruction of its superstar era and the subsequent embarrassment of a first-round playoff sweep, has something else in mind. What exactly that will be, however, isn’t clear at all.

The cost-cutting certainly makes business sense, as it got Brooklyn under the luxury tax threshold even when counting for Cam Johnson’s new contract, the minimum exception signing of backup point guard Dennis Smith Jr., and the cap holds for rookie first-round picks Noah Clowney and Dariq Whitehead. Brooklyn can easily fill their two open roster slots (not counting their allowable two-way players) with others on minimum deals and proceed into the season with a team that would be destined for the lottery—only with Houston owning the 2024 Draft pick courtesy of the James Harden acquisition 2.5 years ago.

Or…maybe the Nets are setting themselves up to try something else.

I’m not plugged in to know what that could be, though reports indicate that the organization is kicking the tires over whether they should get involved in a potential Damian Lillard transaction now that the star point guard has officially asked out of Portland. In my view, a Lillard landing in Brooklyn does not push the needle further enough to be worthy of the cost in first-round pick treasury. I’m not a fan of Miami’s (Tyler) Herro ball either. Now, if one of the parties wants to take Ben Simmons’ contract off Brooklyn’s hands to make a deal, Nets General Manager Sean Marks would have to scream, “Where do I sign!” Otherwise, I think the Nets would be better served with a more incremental approach.

As for laying the groundwork for their rejuvenation, I can say for certain that the Smith signing isn’t inspiring—he’s Donald Sloan with better speed who shot under 30% from deep in half of his six NBA seasons spanning five different teams. Marks, as per his custom, wasn’t linked to any of the available big men, so that hole still would have to be filled before the Nets can take themselves seriously.

The underlying—and unknown—variable in all of this is Governor Joseph Tsai’s budget. History has shown us that if Tsai feels the Nets have a shot, he’ll spend. He authorized massive luxury tax bills in both 2020-21 and 2021-22. All Marks had to do was dump Curry at the trade deadline to get under the tax line last season, but the organization ultimately decided that Curry was a necessary component for the team to compete in the playoffs. Big mistake.

Now that Tsai has a better grasp of the team’s status, it seems like it would be a lot more difficult to sway him to break the bank for a product that at best might be slightly better than mediocre. Not that he suddenly needs to start pinching pennies, but his foundational business, the Chinese Amazon-like mega-corporation Alibaba, has seen a decline so drastic that Tsai, a co-founder, was called back last month to take over as chairman.

Again, there’s no way of knowing how this affects the Nets’ plans. I don’t think we’re looking at a Fred Wilpon situation here. It’s just might be more nuanced.

As I noted in my previous post, when it comes to the luxury tax calculation, it’s not how you start, but how you finish. The Nets have exceptions—the $12.4 million mid-level and many trade exceptions, the largest of which are $19.9 million (Harris) and $18.1 million (Kevin Durant)--through which they can go back—at least temporarily— into luxury tax land. I know of several Nets fans who would love to see Atlanta’s Dejounte Murray slide right into that larger trade exception if, of course, he’s made available.

And if by February the organization sees that it’s not working out, there should be teams willing to absorb the contracts of valuable wings like Royce O’Neale and Dorian Finney-Smith or center Nic Claxton so the Nets can get back under the tax line by the season’s end.

My guess? The Nets will have no interest in paying luxury taxes this season, not when the team’s ceiling would be another first-round dropout. You can’t be too disappointed with the logic, though it could get pretty ugly at Barclays Center for the next season or two.

Then again, the Nets could surprise us all with another big splash. They’ve done it before. We’ll just have to keep refreshing Twitter every day (until Elon Musk cuts us off).