Thirty days after coming to terms on a two-year, $19MM contract, the Nets finally completed their deal with free agent big man Moritz Wagner on Friday. As Yossi Gozlan of The Third Apron tweets, Wagner was willing to wait several weeks to put pen to paper in order to give Brooklyn the opportunity to seek a viable use for roughly $14MM in leftover cap room.
If the Nets had found a trade or free agent signing worth putting that $14MM in room toward, they could’ve subsequently signed Wagner using their room exception. But with nothing having materialized, Brooklyn moved forward and finalized Wagner’s deal using cap room, leaving the team with just $4.5MMish remaining, plus that $9.4MM room exception.
While the Nets, who now have a full 15-man standard roster, may decide to carry that $4.5MM in cap room into the regular season, Gozlan notes (via Twitter) that it could also be put toward renegotiating Michael Porter Jr.‘s 2026/27 salary as part of an extension agreement.
A renegotiation can only be used to increase a player’s current-year salary and is only available to teams operating under the cap. Giving a player a raise in the short term could make him more inclined to accept more team-friendly terms on an extension, though a $4.5MM raise on Porter’s current $40.8MM salary would be relatively modest and likely wouldn’t incentivize him to accept too steep a discount.
We have more notes from around the Atlantic:
In a column for Sportsnet.ca, Michael Grange shares his thoughts on why the NBA’s investigation into the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard is taking so long and explains why he believes the star forward will be on the Raptors‘ roster when training camps open in late September. As Grange outlines, nearly all of the involved parties will have to consider what they have to gain if the investigation ends relative to what they stand to lose if it continues to drag on.
Knicks forward Josh Hart and Warriors forward Draymond Green exchanged barbs on social media this week after an old clip from a 2024 podcast was reposted on Twitter. In that resurfaced clip, Green criticized Jalen Brunson for taking a team-friendly extension with the Knicks, prompting Hart to publish a tweet stating, “We got to normalize grown men not counting other peoples pockets.” Green shot back on Threads, questioning why Hart didn’t make his comments two years ago and calling him a front-runner.
With Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum set to open the 2026/27 season on opposing teams for the first time since Tatum entered the NBA in 2017, Jay King of The Athletic revisits – and expresses appreciation for – the duo’s decade-long run together with the Celtics.