Brian Lewis of the New York Post is reporting that the Brooklyn Nets are “expected to follow [a] shorter rebuild strategy,” after trading away Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks and recouping control of their next two drafts from the Houston Rockets, moves that surely won’t be the last in ensuring the Nets will not win many games next year.
It is, of course, a bit early to be charting out rebuilding strategies given that the Nets have only been on this path for less than a week — with Cam Johnson and Dorian Finney-Smith still on the roster, for now — but Lewis indicates that Brooklyn would like to use the monstrous amount of cap space they’ll have next summer.
The shorter path down that road is to keep going the way they’re going, to use the 16 first-round picks Marks has collected and — after letting the expiring deals of Ben Simmons, Bojan Bogdanovic and Dennis Schroder run out next summer — spend a staggering $80 million in 2025 cap space.
He then cites the actions of the Houston Rockets last summer, when they signed Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks (while aggressively courting Brook Lopez), after three years of misery following a James Harden trade you may have heard of. Those moves didn’t propel Houston into the contender-stratosphere, but the Rockets did compete for a Play-In Tournament spot in 2024, and are certainly through with the “let’s lose a lot” portion of their rebuild.
Lewis also brings down the hammer on some rumors that have cropped up since Brooklyn chose the rebuild route.
Despite whatever rumors are floating about, don’t expect the Nets to move Simmons this summer for some long-term bad deal (read: Zach LaVine). And forget reports of a D’Angelo Russell reunion; it’s not likely.
One key here is that Lewis reports neither Sean Marks nor Joe Tsai has tipped their hand, “either publicly or privately,” but rather that this reporting is based one conversations with agents and executives around the league. It’d be one thing for such messaging to come from Brooklyn itself, perhaps trying to assure fans that they won’t suck for too long, but it may carry more weight coming from external sources.
Lewis does note: “Market matters, and Brooklyn would be unwise not to use every edge next summer.”
As for next summer’s free agent class, there are still many player and team options to be decided, trades to be made, and basketball to be played, but the headliners could be Lauri Markkanen, Jimmy Butler, and Donovan Mitchell to name a few.
(For those thinking to themselves how free agency has changed since the Brooklyn Nets last made huge splashes in 2019, you’d be right! Paul George, as of yesterday, and the aforementioned VanVleet are the only two free agents to change teams by signing a max deal in the last five years.)
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, though, Sean Marks & Co. have some business to attend to, and Lewis has some details there.
What Marks does over the next week or so of free agency will paint a clear picture of whatever he and Tsai plan to do. Veterans like Cam Johnson and Dorian Finney-Smith could well be moved, but who they’re moved for — or more to the point, the lengths of the contracts coming back — should be telling.
I would argue it seems a bit foolish to determine the direction of the rebuild before a single new long-term player — with respect to Bojan Bogdanović — has been acquired. Forget about where they’ll be picking in the draft next season, we don’t even know if Noah Clowney is good yet!
Again, Lewis reports that this goes the thinking around the greater NBA, not necessarily within Brooklyn. Still, it shouldn’t come as a surprise if the Nets are in free-agency rumors about 364 days from now.
The Nets were only convinced to trade Bridges by a confluence of events: their inability to pair him with an All-Star like Mitchell, and his own desire to leave and join the Knicks. A deep rebuild was never a preference, but a pivot.
The smart pivot would be to keep their eyes on 2025. And that’s what the league is expecting.