The Brooklyn Nets are in an interesting spot, sitting eighth in the Eastern Conference. Despite ongoing rumors of the Nets making everyone on their roster available for a trade, there’s a caveat involved. They want to keep their cap space heading into the 2025 season. ESPN reported that same sentiment.
“Just about everyone on their roster is available as long as they don’t take back long-term money,” one source told ESPN of Brooklyn, which also could have up to $70 million in cap space next summer.
“They’re not giving anyone away. At least not yet.”
An interesting element of keeping the cap space could be the potential free agents on the market. For instance, Kevin Durant, Brandon Ingram, and Ben Simmons highlight some of the market. Also, Durant mentioned he’s a Net for life, before squaring off against Brooklyn on Wednesday.
The Nets will have nearly $80 million in cap space, with Simmons and Bojan Bogdanovic set to be unrestricted free agents. That’s not including restricted free agents that could hit the market. Not to mention, the Nets could control the trade deadline market, with guys like Dennis Schröder and Dorian Finney-Smith on one-year deals. While they’ve been productive so far, win-now teams could aim for players like those two.
Nets headline trade rumors but don’t want long-term contracts
As mentioned before, Brooklyn isn’t interested in acquiring players on long-term deals. While free agency is a big part of their reasoning, they could also bring back some pieces. The Nets have been high on Ben Simmons ever since trading him. He’s had his best season with the team so far. However, he’s still far from where the team would aspire him to be.
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Also, Brooklyn has a plethora of first-round picks from the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Phoenix Suns, in addition to its own. There’s a variety of options the Nets can do with this move. They can save their cap space for a marquee free agent, or commit to a full rebuild. After all, they haven’t had a full-on rebuild since the mid-to-late 2010s. Even then, they couldn’t use their draft picks because they belonged to the Boston Celtics.
Finally, the Nets could mimic what the Oklahoma City Thunder pulled off. They can build around a player, and use the cap space and draft picks to build around that person. Brooklyn has Cam Thomas, one of the more prolific scorers in the league. Head coach Jordi Fernandez has been labeled the ‘right guy’ for the rebuild. Still, it’s tough to tell what they will do. All that anyone knows is that they have zero interest in a long-term contract.