Hot Hot Hoops senior writer Matt Hanifan will provide his take on the offseasons of all 30 teams for the next 30 days! Today, we are looking back on the Brooklyn Nets’ offseason!
Previous Offseason Outlooks:
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Additions: Bojan Bogdanovic (trade), Shake Milton (Sign-and-trade), Ziaire Williams (trade)
Subtractions: Keita Bates-Diop (trade), Mikal Bridges (trade), Jacob Gilyard, Dennis Smith Jr., Lonnie Walker IV
Re-signed: Nic Claxton, Keon Johnson, Trenton Watford
Draft: None
Hanifan’s take: The Nets hit a home run with the Mikal Bridges trade. Bridges is an exceptionally good defensive wing, but in this context, he wasn’t a great lead creator worthy of building around long-term. The Nets were somehow able to extract five first-round picks plus an unprotected pick swap from New York–in addition to Bogdanovic ($19.0M expiring), who they can potentially trade for more at the deadline–for Bridges. Additionally, they subsequently netted their own first-round picks back in 2025 and 2026 from Houston, which they previously sent for James Harden in 2021. The conglomeration of moves was excellent for Brooklyn, who can now start at phase one of this rebuild. Acquiring Ziaire Williams–who’s in the last year of his rookie contract for $6.3 million–for pennies on the dollar could also reap benefits in the short-term and long-term. Nic Claxton’s $97 million deal (over four years) was also frontloaded, never taking up more than 17 percent of the cap; in the last two years of his deal, he will be on the books for $23.8 million and $21.6 million, which will account for 11.6 and 9.5 percent of the projected cap, respectively, per Spotrac. That’s a bargain. Lastly, I also loved the Jordi Fernandez hire. He’s been valuable on multiple staffs alongside Nuggets head coach Mike Malone and Kings head coach Mike Brown, and helped Team Canada to their first World Cup medal ever in 2023, his first season as their head coach. All in all, for what Brooklyn was trying to accomplish from a rebuilding perspective, this was an excellent offseason. I wish they were slightly more active on the trade market getting rid of assets, but perhaps the deal(s) weren’t available to them. Nevertheless, they can still look to move on from Dennis Schroder ($13.0M expiring), Dorian Finney Smith ($14.9M expiring) or even Cam Johnson (three years, $69 million; $4.5M unlikely bonuses) in February to stack up even more assets.
Grade: A-
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