July 6 came and went and the Brooklyn Nets trade sending Nick Claxton to Chicago and Julius Randle to Brooklyn didn’t get officially approved. The reason was mundane: a late add to the trade, the Bulls Mouhamadou Gueye, couldn’t be dealt until July 9 because he had been acquired by the Bulls on April 9 and this couldn’t be moved for 90 days under the CBA rules.
Then July 9 came and again, nothing. While the delay only currently affects rookie Joshua Jefferson’s availability for the Vegas Summer League — the Nets acquired his Draft rights in that deal, the reasons why nothing happened this time were not so easy to explain. Was it possible that the trade is being expanded or that the Nets were trying to determine how the trade will affect other issues going forward?
Finally, on Friday, just before the Nets and Knicks were to tip off in a Las Vegas Summer League contest, the deal is done. The Nets announced it themselves…
Marks welcomed Randle, now on his fifth team since being drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers out of Kentucky in 2014 with the seventh pick in the first round.
“Julius is an extremely accomplished player who will raise our level of physical toughness and competitiveness,” said General Manager Sean Marks. “His veteran leadership and big game experience will be immensely impactful to our young players as we continue to grow as a team. We’re excited to welcome Julius and his family and look forward to making them part of our Brooklyn community.
Marks also wished Nic Claxton, the team’s longest serving player, well.
“The decision to part with Nic was not an easy one. Over his seven seasons with our team, Nic was an exemplary representative of our organization and the borough of Brooklyn. It’s been rewarding to witness Nic’s growth as both a player and a person throughout his time with the Nets and we wish him and his family nothing but the best in the future. We are thankful for the impact Nic had here and he’ll always remain part of the Nets family.”
Claxton was drafted at No. 31, the first pick of the second round, in 2019, just days before the Nets made their Clean Sweep by getting commitments from Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan. So he survived all the ups and downs of the organization over the next seven seasons, including the trade for James Harden, the collapse of the Big Three after only 16 games, the trades of all three, four head coaching changes and the rebuild.
The Nets celebrated the completion of the deal by welcoming Randle, one of the games top power forwards, to the organization…
Randle will turn 32 years old in November, making him the oldest player on the roster by nearly three years. He just averaged 21/7/5 in his second and final season with the Wolves, during which there was noise about his fit (or lack thereof) in the locker room. With the Nets, Randle gets to return to New York City, where he wore a Knick uniform for five seasons, and attempt to help lead the Nets toward a playoff spot.
His most productive seasons in terms of individual stats came with the Knicks where over his tenure he put up better 22 points a game, grabbed nearly 1o boards and nearly five assists, winning the Most Improved Player award in 2021 and being selected both to the NBA All-Star team and All-NBA. But the Knicks did not win with him and Leon Rose sent him to Minnesota in a blockbuster trade that brought Karl-Anthony Towns to MSG.
The first on-court effect of the trade is that Jefferson is now on the Brooklyn Summer League roster. He will not play vs. the Knicks Friday evening but will be be available on Saturday when the Nets play the Atlanta Hawks at 8:00 p.m. ET.
The announcement ends speculation that the trade could be expanded beyond the original teams. There was one minor wrinkle. Gueye will now move from the Bulls to the Hornets rather than the Timberwolves as originally reported. No new assets were moved. The number of guaranteed roster spots on the Brooklyn roster remains at 15 with the Nets payroll jumping $8.75 million, the result of a $5.78 million difference between Randle and Claxton’s salaries and the $2.97 million guaranteed rookie salary for Jefferson. Evans as a second rounder does not have a guarantee.
The Nets absorbed the Randle contract into cap space, dramatically reducing what’s now available for any significant move in free agency, barring a trade…
Prior to the announcement, Jake Fischer of The Steinline suggested that the Nets were reviewing their cap space, etc., and other financials. He put it in the context of various teams’ pursuit of Peyton Watson, the 6’9” Denver Nuggets power forward who’s a restricted free agent and has been rumored to be a Nets target.
Brooklyn does still possess the cap space to furnish Watson with an offer sheet in his desired salary range, but I’m told that the Nets have been internally assessing how to utilize their available spending power before officially completing their multi-team trade with Minnesota, Charlotte and Chicago that will bring Julius Randle to Barclays Center and transport LaMelo Ball from the Hornets to the Timberwolves.
The Nets have not been keen, though, on plying Watson with an offer sheet in that $25-plus million range. It’s a ballpark, remember, that stems from Nuggets swingman Christian Braun’s five-year, $125 million rookie scale extension last October.
If Brooklyn did value Watson in that range, Denver surely would have seen an offer sheet for the 23-year-old by now. Unless the Nets’ stance changes, Memphis’ offer sheet to Quinten Post that Golden State declined to match would remain the lone offer sheet tendered to a restricted free agent to date this offseason.
That’s a bit more specific than Fischer’s comments two days ago when he said that the Nets were nothing more than a “conceptual suitor” for Watson indicating that Sean Marks & co. weren’t that interested in the 23-year-old at least at the price tag he preferred. (Fischer also stated that while the Clippers pursuit of PWat is complicated by the still unresolved Kawhi Leonard scandal, the Hawks may be ready to enter a sign-and-trade discussion.)
There remain some housekeeping matters for the Nets as well. They have yet to officially sign Moe Wagner. They can pay the 6’11” center either out of that remaining cap space or sign him out of the $9.4 million room MLE they have access to. According to a report by Mike Scotto, Nets and Wagner agreed to a two-year, $19 million deal so his first year would fit neatly in the MLE. Timing, it should be noted, is critical to managing cap space. The Nets currently have or could easily access up to $25 million.
Malachi Smith, the rookie guard, is in the second year of a two-year, totally non-guaranteed deal. Indeed, on Friday afternoon, Smith posted a promotion for his annual youth camp in his hometown of Belleville, Ill. He contained no reference to the Nets, not in the text or in the accompanying photos…
It also seemed odd that Smith didn’t accompany the Nets Summer League team to either Sacramento or Las Vegas despite being one of the team’s youngest players. Later Friday, the Nets requested waivers on Smith.
Then, there’s the big ticket: extending Michael Porter Jr. Porter is eligible — and has been eligible for weeks — to sign an extension up to four years and $234 million. No one expects the deal to reach those heights but there’s been speculation that he could wind up with a deal for four at $160 million that would include a jump in his salary next season from $40.8 million to $49 million then a drop-off in years after that.
That contract signing could easily be the final inking of free agency.
There’s no indication that MPJ wants to leave and a number of indications that the Nets would like to keep him. It’s not just that he averaged 24.2 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.0 assists and shot 46/36/86 last season. He has also become a mentor to the team’s youngsters. Just last week, video of him hosting four of last year’s rookies at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri in May recirculated…
And as noted, he recently hosted Watson, his former Nuggets teammate, on a yacht in the Mediterranean. Does that mean anything other the two, who have been close, remain friends?
There’s also a possibility that the Nets could try to move him, as Brian Lewis suggested Thursday on Erik Slater’s Locked on Nets podcast, but at this point that seems unlikely.
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