RUMOR ROUND-UP: Of course, they’re looking to do deals, but who and when?

It is silly season. The Nets are in the market but not every rumor will bear fruit.

With Dennis Schroder traded on the first day of trade season — December 15, the Brooklyn Nets are every pundit’s favorite to make the next big deal, this one involving teammates Dorian Finney-Smith or maybe Cam Johnson. The tank, after all, is on.

But Sean Marks & co. are notoriously quite close-mouthed this time of year with most rumors emanating from other teams (we see you, Houston) or agents. As one league source told ND, “Any deal they do won’t get leaked before they do it. Did anyone have Dennis deal before it was done?”

And of course this is also the time of year when reporters whose names fans barely knew a few days ago are suddenly imbued with the wisdom and contacts of the former Woj. So it’s hard to separate the real from the trade machine.

Of course, the Nets are taking and making calls. They want to get as close to the top draft picks come June and long term are still building their cache of picks. As Bobby Marks of ESPN notes Wednesday morning in a survey of all 30 teams:

The Nets have 15 first-round picks over the next seven years, including 12 that are tradable. They could have four first-rounders in the 2025 draft — their own, Milwaukee (if 5-30), Phoenix and New York. (The Knicks owe the Nets first-rounders in 2027, 2029 and 2031). The Nets have 13 second-round picks available to trade.

In fact, the Nets have more firsts now than the the Thunder and third most overall, per YES Network research. And that doesn’t include the two possible first round swaps in 2028. (Do they want more? Well, they just netted two more seconds in the Schroder trade, sending out one and returning three. That should tell you something.)

Bobby Marks (no relation) also lists, players with trade value in this order: “Cam Johnson ($22.5M, UFA 2027), Dorian Finney-Smith ($14.9M, Player 2025) and Cam Thomas ($4M, RFA 2025).”

A number of teams have been linked to Johnson and DFS but none more than the Los Angeles Lakers. LA is muddling along with a 14-12 record and beset by rumors that LeBron James, who turns 40 later this month, may want out. So, there’s some urgency in filling in key holes in the rotation.

Jovan Buha who covers the Lakers for The Athletic suggested both in his blog, Buha’s Block, in a story for The Athletic, two of their needs could be filled by the two Nets players seen as the most likely to be moved before February 6. He wrote Tuesday:

The Brooklyn Nets, who are currently in the Play-In mix in the East, are looking to trade parts of their core to prioritize their future. After trading Schröder, Brooklyn is expected to make wings Cam Johnson ($22.5 million but with a likely cap hit of $27 million) and Dorian Finney-Smith ($14.9 million) available — and much sooner than the Feb. 6 deadline. Both have been tied to the Lakers for months. The Lakers have been interested in Finney-Smith for at least a couple of years.

Nowhere, however, does Buha suggest a return and therein lies the problem with any trade with Los Angeles. This is 2024 and the new CBA looms over any trade discussions.

As Keith Smith wrote recently for Spotrac about rumored CJ-to-LA trades:

For example, one popular NBA Trade Machine proposal features Johnson headed to the Los Angeles Lakers. In order to acquire Johnson in any reasonable trade construction, the Lakers have to aggregate salaries. That means they trigger a second apron hard cap. As it stands today, Los Angeles is only a scant $45,001 under the second apron. That’s almost no wiggle room, and there’s certainly not enough to bring in Johnson, given he’d account for the additional $3,375,000 towards the apron.

You can mess around with different combinations, but it gets tricky to find a match that makes sense for both the Nets and the Lakers.

Sean Marks, of course, is a proven master of the multiple team deal, having arranged multiple four-team deals and one five-teamer, the Spencer Dinwiddie trade to Washington in August 2021. But those were simpler times.

Dealing Johnson has its own issues, the off-discussed incentives, and while the assumption is that the Nets are marketing the 6’8” shooter, there have been some suggestion in the past week or so that that Nets may not to be ready to deal him or are asking a lot for him..

He has shown a marked improvement across the board this season in large part because of how Jordi Fernandez and his coaching staff has used him…

He is now viewed by most pundits as a bargain even a steal, a big turnaround from last year when many, including some unsophisticated fans, saw him as overpaid. Funny how things can change. It’s called player development.

At the moment, according to a number of sources, the Nets are looking for at least a first rounder for him and maybe a prospect or two. Sam Vecenie of The Athletic, who has been around and has been accurate in the past, wrote extensively Tuesday about where he sees Johnson fitting in the Nets plans whether they choose to move him or keep him, noting not just trade value but his development value on a rebuilding club.

Because he’s such a good shooter, he’s a perfect developmental player to have around as the team enters a rebuilding era. His contract is also entirely reasonable. Johnson makes $22.5 million this season and has two years remaining for a total of $43 million. Given the way salaries will continue to rise over the next two years, he’s probably a bit of a steal for a starting-quality player at that price point. The Nets can keep him and maintain all of their salary flexibility in future years. Because the market for him will be wide with his ability to fit anywhere (and because the team doesn’t have to move him), expect the price point to be quite high if the Nets do trade him. Expect at least a first-rounder and a good prospect, if not just two first-rounders outright. Otherwise, they can just keep him.

On Wednesday, two of Vecenie’s colleagues, Tony Jones and Sam Amick, listed Johnson as among six players the Denver Nuggets are interested in, along with Chicago’s Zach LaVine, Washington’s Jordan Poole, Utah’s Jordan Clarkson, Atlanta’s De’Andre Hunter, and Washington’s Jonas Valančiūnas. But that was their only reference to CamJ in the story, again like Buha’s speculation regarding Lakers’ interest, there was no indication of what the Nets could get back.

There was also a report Tuesday by Evan Sidery of Forbes, who’s very active of late on Twitter, saying the Nets and Nuggets had had “exploratory talks.”

That seems a bit far-fetched. Michael Porter Jr. makes $8 million more this year than Johnson and is owed $79 million over the two seasons beyond this one. As ND and others have written — and as the Schroder deal has shown — the Nets want expiring deals in return for their vets. Yes, they might take on an extra year of salary if returning draft assets were “rich”, as one league source told ND but that’s not that their preference.

So, taking on Porter doesn’t seem like a fit for that priority. And as Bobby Marks also noted in his survey Wednesday, “Brooklyn is $3.5 million below the tax, $5.4 million below the first apron and cannot exceed the threshold.”

Moving Finney-Smith seems like a much more likely in the short term. He’s basically got an expiring deal — he has a player option for next season which he’s not expected to exercise — and is having, like Schroder, like Johnson, a very good year, hitting nearly 45% of his threes.

Vecenie also provided his take on DFS’s value Tuesday, estimating that he could bring back “Late first-rounder or multiple good second-rounders.” One reason: he expects competition, calling him “tailor-made fit as a deadline acquisition” and “one of the most likely players to be dealt,”

He doesn’t command a significant number of touches. He makes shots from 3, having already hit 42.2 percent from distance this season and 37.3 percent from 3 since 2019-20 on over 1,800 attempts. Finney-Smith is also a versatile defender. He’s not quite as good as he was back when he was in his mid-to-late 20s with Dallas, but he’s a plus there and still very long and competes at a high level on that end.Any team in need of an influx of shooting and defense — and many of them could use such a skill set contained in just one player’s toolbox — would be interested.

Vecenie lists the Lakers, Pacers and 76ers as possible trading partners.

Bobby Marks inclusion of Cam Thomas on his Nets short list is interesting and a bit mysterious. He doesn’t go into details and while there have been rumors that Thomas, a restricted free agent, might be of interest to other teams, he would be a rental and not return a lot of assets presumably.

As Marc Stein wrote in his Sunday review of the Schroder trade…

The Nets aren’t done making trades, of course, with Dorian Finney-Smith, Bojan Bogdanović, Day’Ron Sharpe and Johnson all currently or likely to be drawing various levels of trade interest (among other Nets).

We would tend to dismiss any short-term trade interest in Sharpe despite his 15-point, 7-rebound, 3-steal performance in the Nets blowout loss to the Cavaliers. It was his second game back from another injury. Teams are going to want to see how he does going forward. So will Brooklyn. But Vecenie also provided his take on Sharpe, valuing him at a couple of seconds. He even suggested Sharpe would welcome such a trade.

[W]hy would a rebuilding Nets team be looking to trade him? He’s a restricted free agent this summer, and the team just signed Nic Claxton to a nine-figure deal last year. I don’t know that I would want to necessarily stick around if I were Sharpe. I also don’t know that I’d necessarily want to pay Sharpe if I were Brooklyn, even if the price shouldn’t be outrageous. A couple of second-round picks seem like a reasonable price point for everyone.

As for Bogdanovic, we don’t even know when he will get back on the court. No one is giving up much for an injured 36-year-old with a $19.0 million expiring contract.

By the time you read this, of course, there will be other rumors, some more noteworthy than others. Those who expect another quick hit from Sean Marks might be disappointed. As we’ve noted the Schroder deal was fortunate in that the salaries of Schroder and De’Anthony Melton were as near a match as you’re likely to find and both were expiring. Golden State needed a back-up point guard and the Nets return, three seconds and a two-way, did no harm to the Warriors rotation.

It does seem that with so many teams engaged in a race to the bottom and ping pong balls galore that Sean Marks wanted to move sooner rather than later and the opportunity was there. The Nets GM has, as we’ve noted, visited New Brunswick, N.J. to take in Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper (Bailey twice, Harper four times, by our informal count.) That’s an extraordinary number of times for a GM to individually scout one or even two college prospects. He knows the stakes.

“These are decisions you have to make when your ultimate goal is long-term, sustainable success,” he told reporters Sunday after the Schroder deal became official. “We’re weighing a lot of factors … looking at the big picture, this is what’s best for our organization long term.”

• Nets scrambling to process what comes next after Dennis Schroder trade – Bridget Reilly – New York Post