RUMOR ROUNDUP: Cam Johnson — and Nic Claxton — have high price tags

Three more weeks till the trade deadline, then another seven till the Draft Lottery. Hang in there, the rumors will get wilder.

The trade deadline is 20 days away — February 6, 3:00 p.m. ET. So, expect the rumors to mount as both veteran pundits and the lesser Wojspirants push out their thoughts, but at the moment, most of it is speculation.

We read that Sean Marks & co. still want two firsts and “stuff,” as Jake Fischer has said, for Cam Johnson but want that “stuff” — returning players — to be on expiring deals. That sounds like a tough bill to fill.

On Friday, in fact, both ESPN and The Athletic wrote about interest in Cam Johnson, with a little added discussion of whether Nic Claxton might also be available despite having signed a four-year, $100 million contract in the off-season.

Bottom line: The Nets aren’t giving anyone away. The price remains high. Still, Brian Windhorst and Tim Bontemps write that NBA executives believe C.J. is the player most likely to be moved before the deadline with Clax also seen as available.

The reasoning is obvious: The Nets, who were the early movers in the trade market by trading both Dennis Schroder (to the Golden State Warriors) and Dorian Finney-Smith (to the Los Angeles Lakers) over the past few weeks, continue to hunt for as many pingpong balls as possible in the upcoming NBA draft lottery. Johnson is arguably the one legitimate difference-making player who could change teams over the next several weeks, with his teammate Nic Claxton also mentioned as a possible trade candidate.

“The Nets asking price is high,” one league executive said, referring to both Johnson and Claxton, “and they [have made] it known they don’t feel like they have to trade them now. But if they’re helping them win games, they’ll trade them or put them on the bench.”

A league source contacted by NetsDaily offered a similar assessment.

“They are going to be hard to deal with as they will only take back expiring,” said the source. “They will still tank. They will just start sitting people.

“It will work out though as often the very worst team doesn’t win the lottery.”

Indeed, the Nets draft lottery position is moving in the right direction … if you’re the front office. Although they currently have the seventh best odds of getting the overall No. 1 pick in the June draft, they are percentage points behind the Trailblazers for sixth and only three games out of third and four and a half out of second with 41 games to go. They keep losing and teams ahead of them are now winning a little. The Pelicans and Raptors have won two straight. Over the last 10 games, the Nets’ 2-8 record is second worst among the 14 lottery teams, behind only the Wizards who are 1-9 and on an eight-game losing streak. Charlotte is also 2-8.

Joe Vardon of the Athletic, who has covered the Cleveland Cavaliers for years, wrote Friday that the Cavs have joined the reportedly lengthy list of teams with interest in Cam Johnson.

Executives from three franchises told The Athletic that Cleveland has expressed interest in acquiring 6-foot-8 forward Cam Johnson from the Brooklyn Nets — one of the most coveted players league-wide in the trade market — with the Feb. 6 NBA trade deadline fast approaching.

League sources with knowledge of Cleveland’s internal discussions say Johnson has been discussed as a potential target and say the franchise has done its due diligence in inquiring about the availability of Johnson. Rival team officials, however, believe the Cavs’ interest to be more serious than that.

However, the Cavs would seen to lack what the Nets want. As Vardon notes, “The Cavs have a trove of second-round picks to offer but can’t trade a first-round pick until 2031.” Looking at their roster, there’s only one big, expiring deal, Caris LeVert at $16.6 million, and a number of smaller deals. That combination doesn’t sound like something that would interest Brooklyn … without the involvement of a third team.

Meanwhile, Bobby Marks tweeted that with the new CBA with its various restrictions has made trading big deals like Johnson’s difficult…

Johnson, for the purposes of trades, makes $27.0 million this season.

As the list notes, only one team — Brooklyn — has had any success in moving contracts of more than $10 million. (It should be noted that the Nets have been the most active NBA team in the trade market both this season and since last year’s trade deadline. adding five first rounders, a first round pick swap, and 10 seconds while exchanging firsts and swaps with Houston. Since December 15, the unofficial start of trade season, they’ve been involved in two trades involving seven players and seven second round draft picks.)

Capologist Yossi Gozlan, writing for the Third Apron substack, suggests that those second rounders have become the new coin of the realm in the NBA trade market. Since the trade deadline, the Nets have acquired a trio of seconds for Royce O’Neale, Dennis Schroder and Dorian Finney-Smith and just this week, the Suns trade Josh Okogie and three second round picks to the Hornets for Nick Richards and one second rounder. Expect teams with large caches of second rounders to have an advantage going forward, Gozlan writes.

[T]he Thunder, Nets, and Jazz own a large portion of future first-round picks, including a third of them in the upcoming 2025 Draft. Is it possible that the late 2020s to early 2030s are dominated by these teams? If they draft well enough, like the Thunder already have, they have the assets to maintain a long window while already withholding those means from the rest of the league.

Time will tell if this is something that comes to fruition, but it appears we are starting to see another effect of this: more second-round picks being traded.

So if these teams can’t or won’t trade any first-round picks, it’s understandable why teams would resort to trading the next type of draft equity they can. Unlike first-round picks, second-round picks don’t have trade restrictions and can be wholesaled. And the quantity of second-round picks being moved in a single trade is a trend that I’ve noticed picking up since the 2023 trade deadline.

At the other end of the scale, Gozlan notes that a number of teams are without many second rounders. Twelve teams have three or fewer second rounders through 2031!

Bottom line, of course, is that the Nets aren’t talking much. You have seen a number of reporters, including us, quoting “league sources” and other “executives” but not “Nets insiders”.

As that “league source” we quoted above told us, “Any deal they do won’t get leaked before they do it,” referring to the spate of rumors as “all guessing … did anyone have the Dennis deal before it was done.”

So hang on, one three weeks left.