The Brooklyn Nets are expected to be one of a few teams this offseason that will have plenty of money to spend in free-agency thanks to their salary-cap flexibility. Given that Brooklyn is still in the early stages of its rebuild, the franchise probably won’t spend their money frivolously, but there are some avenues for them to explore when it comes to improving the team in some way.
“The Brooklyn Nets‘ only real in-house free-agent priority is young journeyman Ochai Agbaji. The 25-year-old wing is a low-stakes concern. Brooklyn has the leverage of matching rights if retaining him is in its plans,” Grant Hughes wrote for Bleacher Report when discussing Brooklyn’s potential free-agency concerns. Agbaji is one of the players that general manager Sean Marks took a flyer on to see if he could fit into the Nets’ current rebuild.
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“The real decisions will come in the cap space department, where the Nets are among the very few teams with real spending potential,” Hughes continued. “As it stands now, Brooklyn should have around $45 million in cap room. That money doesn’t necessarily have to go to an outside free agent. They might be better utilized to take on salary in unbalanced trades.”
When excluding the three Two-Way players (Tyson Etienne, EJ Liddell, and Chaney Johnson) from this season, the Nets will have six free-agents to think about this offseason. Center Day’Ron Sharpe, forwards Ziaire Williams and Josh Minott, and guard Malachi Smith have team options of varying amounts for next season so Brooklyn could exercise those options for the sake of maximizing value and continuing the development process.
What will be interesting to monitor over the course of this summer is how the Nets approach their restricted free-agents in Agbaji and forward Jalen Wilson. Agbaji, whom the Nets acquired via trade from the Toronto Raptors along with a 2032 second-round pick, averaged 6.7 points per game this season while Wilson, whom Brooklyn selected in the second round of the 2023 NBA Draft, averaged 6.4 points per contest.
This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: What could the Nets do in free-agency this offseason?
