Nets considered to be one team ‘watching and waiting’ this summer

Per Tim Bontemps and Bobby Marks of ESPN, the Brooklyn Nets are considered to be a team ‘watching and waiting’ during this offseason.

The Brooklyn Nets are in a unique position this offseason as they have most of their players under contract for next season and don’t have much cap space left to add players. As such, Brooklyn’s most important task this offseason is re-signing center Nic Claxton. However, there could be more to do.

In an article by Tim Bontemps and Bobby Marks of ESPN, the duo went over how the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) will affect over half of the teams in the NBA in terms of spending. For the Nets, they were listed amongst a group of teams that is considered to be “watching and waiting” for this offseason.

“All five teams, in different ways, are well-positioned to take advantage of other franchises unable to afford players they would want to re-sign, or to be landing spots for teams looking to get rid of contracts they don’t want on their books,” Bontemps and Marks wrote. For Brooklyn, they have various ways that they can go with how they build their team while maintaining flexibility for the 2025 offseason.

“Brooklyn and Washington (Wizards) both have heaps of expiring contracts they could use to take on longer-term deals to give teams future flexibility — or simply, future savings,” Bontemps and Marks wrote. As of the writing of this article, the Nets have six expiring contracts on the books, the most notable being Ben Simmons and the $40.3 million that he’s owed in 2024-25.

As many Nets fans have read over the past year or so, Simmons’ contract is a deal that has proven to not be a good one since his arrival in Brooklyn, but could give them $40 million in cap space next offseason. Based on how the Nets have been operating recently, it seems that being a cap space team next summer will be the most important for them to compete in free-agency.

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