As Jake Fischer wrote Wednesday on his and Marc Stein’s substack, TheSteinLine, the Nets have a virtual monopoly on cap space this off-season:
The Brooklyn Nets are currently the league’s only team on course to have a difference-making amount of cap space to spend this summer. This is not hyperbole.
The actual numbers won’t be known for a while and, as we all know, the NBA can change quickly, but the current reality is that Sean Marks & co. have loaded up on cap space in a big way ... an ideal asset in a summer that one Western Conference executive told Fischer has the potential to be “a crazy summer” full of trades. ESPN’s Shams Charania similarly called it the “most craziest summer” and a league source familiar with the Nets situation told NetsDaily this will be an “interesting off-season all around the league ... to say the least.”
So, we offer this primer on where things stand, based a number of NBA pundits’ recent takes, including how much are the Nets projected to have once the NBA Finals are over, how they might use it ... including some intriguing possibilities ... and when will things start popping.
How Much?
The projections depend on how you slice things, how you time them out. Some have put the Nets number at $30 million, some at $90 million!
As Yossi Gozlan of Third Apron wrote Monday, the math is fluid.
The Nets are entering the offseason with 13 players under contract and just $80.4 million in salaries. Their cap space projection is fluid due to several pending team options and non-guaranteed salaries. They have $74 million if they keep all those players, and could reach $80 million if they cut them all.
They are realistically projected to have significantly less cap space. That $74-80 million projection doesn’t factor in the possibility of re-signing their own restricted free agents. They’d need to renounce the rights to all their free agents to access that cap space amount, which would mean they lose Bird rights to their top free agents. (Emphasis ours.)
That’s not realistic. Gozlan believes the Nets are likely to renounce their rights to both Day’Ron Sharpe and Ziaire Williams but still re-sign them while moving quickly on a Cam Thomas extension. Sharpe ($12 million) and Williams ($18.4 million) have big cap holds, far greater than what’s their likely market value, Gozlan writes.
In the case of Williams, after renouncing his rights, Brooklyn can sign him as an unrestricted free agent using their remaining cap space or the $8.8 million room mid-level exception they have available.
With Sharpe, Brooklyn can offer him a new deal during the late June window when they have exclusive rights. Gozlan doesn’t mention Trendon Watford, but he too is a unrestricted free agent.
One big number affecting the ultimate number will be how much the Nets pay Thomas. Like other pundits, Gozlan puts the number at roughly $90 million over four years, $117 million over five, about the same as Collin Sexton got three years back adjusted for inflation. Judging by the Nets recent history with Cam Johnson and Nic Claxton, expect them to offer Thomas a front-loaded deal and probably early in free agency. He could reject it and become an unrestricted free agent in a year but that’s not likely. Nor is it likely Thomas will get an offer from another team since none have enough to sign him without fearing a Brooklyn match.
Beyond the restricted free agents, there are the five young players with team options — Keon Johnson, Tyrese Martin, Jalen Wilson, and Drew Timme plus Maxwell Lewis, who is extension eligible. Johnson ($271,000), Lewis ($100,000) and Wilson ($88,000) all have small guarantees.
Then, there’s the four first round picks. Depending on how many they actually use, the rookies’ salaries could amount to as much as $16.3 million next season, all fully guaranteed the first two years. Rookie deals are exceptions so they’re likely to be among the last signings.
At end of the day, Gozlan, Fischer and Bobby Marks all believe the Nets will have about $45-$55 million in cap space to use. Again, it’s all fluid.
How will it be used?
Gozlan, Bobby Marks and others use the Nets history as a template in trying to figure out what Sean Marks will do with all of Joe Tsai’s money, absent a really big deal like trading for Giannis Antetokounmpo. (That’s a discussion for another day.) But does that strategy still make sense? Circumstances have changed.
Bobby Marks lays out the Nets options this way, pointing out what the Nets did in the first rebuild:
Take back salary in exchange for draft picks (Brooklyn acquired two firsts in 2017 with that strategy).
Target restricted free agents with an offer sheet (for example, Quentin Grimes and Jonathan Kuminga).
Sign free agents to short-term but bloated salaries.
First let’s look at the record of how it went down back then. Salary dumps were the most successful piece in the Brooklyn GM’s strategy.
Sean Marks did indeed have a very active 2017, as Bobby Marks notes, taking on salary dumps for picks. In February of that year, he traded Bojan Bogdanović and Chris McCullough to the Wizards for Andrew Nicholson, Marcus Thornton and the Wizards lottery-protected first round draft pick that June. (Jarrett Allen was later selected). In July, he traded Justin Hamilton to the Raptors for DeMarre Carroll, a first round pick (Džanan Musa was later selected) and a second (Rodions Kurucs was later selected). Finally, in December, he sent Trevor Booker to the 76ers for Jahlil Okafor, Nik Stauskas and the Knicks second round pick in 2019 (Nic Claxton was later selected.) That’s good work.
Brooklyn has done that recently as well, taking on Ziaire Williams from Memphis and a 2030 Dallas second rounder, sending out Mamadi Diakite. Williams was 21 with a year left on his deal at the time of the trade. Hardly a traditional salary dump.
Do the Nets need to take on salary to add more picks now though? They already have the biggest stash of draft assets in the league. Over the next seven drafts, they have 15 firsts, 13 of them tradeable, plus 16 seconds, all of them tradeable. Yes, the 2026 Draft got even better Wednesday when several solid prospects decided to withdraw from the 2025 Draft and delay their NBA debut for a year. The Nets currently have one first — their own — and two seconds in 2026 but they could trade some of this year’s picks or those future assets to strengthen their position next year. They’re not limited to salary dumps.
Gozlan notes there is another impediment to salary dumps: the increasing value of first rounders in roster-building under the sanctions-heavy CBA. A first rounder on a cheap, four-year deal helps balance the big bucks deals stars and superstars on contenders command. (Cooper Flagg, who will be the highest paid rookie this season, will earn a total of $65 million over the course of his four-year deal, a bargain assuming he pans out the way everyone believes.)
[W]e’ve seen a significant decrease in the amount of draft equity teams give up to save money. Few teams are willing to trade first-round picks to dump a bad contract, unless that player has multiple years left on his deal. We are seeing more deals where they instead trade second-round picks to get off a large expiring contract and even take back a rotation player.
The Nets themselves have done exactly that three times since the 2024 trade deadline, acquiring three seconds each in their trades that sent Royce O’Neale to Phoenix, Dennis Schroder to Golden State and Dorian Finney-Smith to the Lakers.
Are they interested enough in this year’s weak free agent class to tender them offer sheets as they did with Tyler Johnson, Allen Crabbe, Otto Porter Jr. and Donatas Motiejunas between 2016 and 2017. In each case the player’s teams matched the Nets offer ... and none of them turned out to be very good anyway.
Anthony Slater of The Athletic went on the record Thursday saying that the player who’s arguably the free agent class’s big name is not on Brooklyn’s radar.
There is not a current expectation that the Brooklyn Nets are preparing an offer sheet for (Jonathan) Kuminga, but there are signs Brooklyn could be willing to use its open cap space as a vehicle to execute multi-team trade scenarios this summer, league sources said.
As for offering free agents bloated short-term deals, that’s not something Sean Marks did first time around but it offers Brooklyn the opportunity to kick their cap space down the road to 2026. That year’s free agent class is stronger. Would, say, signing D’Angelo Russell make sense ... maybe to a one-year deal perhaps with a small, second year guarantee and a team option? He certainly wants to return.
Beyond the directions Bobby Marks mentioned, there are a couple of new possibilities. One is what Slater mentioned, that Brooklyn could be willing to use its cap space on big trades in return for something of value.
Gozlan likes the idea of the Nets using their cap space to acquire prospects — young players — as well as picks from teams looking to save money as they face the paralyzing effects of the first and second aprons. He just barely mentions the possibility. Nor does he name names, but it is an intriguing prospect, building a roster on the back of bigger deals in which you supply the financing.
Timing
That same source we quoted up at the top of this piece thinks it’s still to early to see clear outlines of what will happen once everyone’s mind is in gear.
“I wouldn’t read or believe much that’s put there on any team,” he told ND. “Assume most are hypothetical.”
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said Thursday that by the Draft, things will get interesting.
“I also think we’re going to see this action around the draft,” he said on ESPN. “There’s not a lot of free agent money out there. There’s not a lot of big-name free agents. The two biggest are James Harden and LeBron James. Both of them I think are staying with their teams. LeBron might not even opt out.”
That of course would be in line with the Nets history. Sean Marks & co. have made trades within a few days of the drat eight of the nine drafts he’s been GM.
Could other teams break the Nets monopoly? Possible but not likely, Fischer wrote.
Detroit could theoretically create roughly $14 million in salary cap space ... but also realistically cannot do so if it hopes to re-sign veterans such as Malik Beasley and Dennis Schroder after both contributed so much to the Pistons’ return to the playoff stage.
Memphis likewise has pathways to create some decent cap space, but the Grizzlies’ priorities are making sure they have enough flexibility to renegotiate and extend Jaren Jackson Jr.’s contract and, if possible, re-sign Santi Aldama.
The other thing to note is that the Nets can manipulate things by timing out their moves. Different rules apply to players with Bird Rights, various exceptions, rookie deals, teams under the cap, over the cap, etc. So timing will be everything.
One of our favorite stories from years gone by was one in which we catalogued how Billy King and his then-capologist Bobby Marks used iPhones and iPads to sequence things to maximum effect. The players, technology and CBA have changed since, but the same strategy applies.
Like any story in advance of the Summer of Our Lives — Jordi Fernandez’s line to describe this off-season, a lot of things can change. Opportunities arise and strategies change, but again at the moment no one is sitting as pretty as Sean Marks when it comes to having the tools. It will be the execution that matters.