ONE MUST GO
Nets have tough choice to get down to 15 players
It’s a simple math equation.
NBA teams can take only 15 players on guaranteed contracts into the regular season, plus another two prospects who will spend a large chunk of the season in the G-League. Yet, entering a season with heightened championship expectations, the Nets are one over. They have 16 players for 15 spots.
Someone must go.
What’s more complicated, however, is deciding who that someone will be. The Big 3 are bulletproof as are the next 10 players on the roster: Joe Harris, Patty Mills, Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul Millsap, Bruce Brown, Nicolas Claxton, James Johnson and rookies Cam Thomas and Day’Ron Sharpe.
That leaves three players with the most at stake as training camp nears.
JEVON CARTER
Carter arrived with the Nets as part of the Landry Shamet trade to the Suns. He is a bulldog point guard known most for his defensive abilities. He is also a career 37% three-point shooter and shot 42% from deep in the 201920 season.
That edge on defense and improved threepoint stroke, however, didn’t help him earn additional playing time in Phoenix. On a surprise championship contender, Carter appeared only in garbage time in the playoffs, buried on the bench behind Chris Paul and Cameron Payne.
The situation with the Nets leaves even fewer minutes for Carter, which makes him a chopping block candidate. James Harden is the team’s full-time point guard, and Kyrie Irving is the full-time shooting guard. Both are expected to play at least 35 minutes per game, and both can fill in for each other, meaning the Nets can and will shift Harden to the two or Irving to the one, depending on the lineup.
The Nets also signed Patty Mills, the longtime Spurs sixth man who joins the team after leading Australia to a bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics. Mills is slated to play nearly every point guard minute that Harden and Irving don’t, meaning Carter will be hard-pressed to find minutes at the one on this roster.
It’s also hard to justify minutes for the 6-foot1 Carter at the two, where he’ll be undersized for the matchup nine times out of 10. Given how loaded the team is at the one, cutting a reserve guard makes sense over any other position.
If the Nets were to cut Carter, though, it would mean they traded Shamet away explicitly for the No. 29 pick in this year’s draft. The Nets surrendered the 19th pick in the 2020 draft to land Shamet, which means if they cut Carter, they gave that pick up solely to move back 10 spots in a later draft class.
DEANDRE BEMBRY
To the naked eye, Bembry is the easy candidate, and for good reason: Only $750,000 of his $1.9 million contract is guaranteed. Another $500,000 guarantees on Dec. 15, meaning the luxury tax-riddled Nets can save a few million if they waive him ahead of the regular season.
But a loaded Nets team finds itself oddly thin on the wings, where Bembry has played alongside other stars — Trae Young and John Collins in Atlanta, Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam in Toronto — throughout his career.
After Harris, who is projected to start at the three unless the Nets go big and start two of Aldridge, Millsap or Griffin next to the Big 3, the team doesn’t have a legitimate backup threeand-D wing.
SEKOU DOUMBOUYA
Doumbouya is the mystery man the Nets received from the Pistons in the DeAndre Jordan trade. Detroit drafted the forward 15th overall in the 2019 draft. Yet the third-year player from Guinea has not done much to separate himself from the pack in his draft class. He has averaged just five points and three rebounds despite getting steady playing time as a reserve, with a few starts under his belt.
Complicating matters for Doumbouya and the Nets is his contract situation: He is entering the third year of his rookie deal, which means he becomes extension eligible this year. He is owed $3.6 million this season — a larger salary than several other players slotted above him on the depth chart — and if the Nets want to keep him beyond this season, the team option to do so is worth $5.5 million.
Even if the Nets do keep him on the roster this season, it is unlikely they re-sign him long-term.