Cam Thomas just paid four million dollars for a no-trade clause. Cam Thomas is OVER it.
“Thomas’ representatives … ultimately declined Brooklyn’s offers of two years and $30 million with a team option for the second season or one year and $9.5 million with incentives up to $11 million while waiving the no-trade clause,” wrote Shams Charania on Thursday, the same day Thomas officially re-signed with the Brooklyn Nets on a one-year $5.99 million qualifying offer.
Like your friend posting an Instagram
Story of the lover they’ve broken up with three times previously, Brooklyn welcomed Thomas back to the team across social media. Who are we kidding here?
The relationship is done. Cam Thomas accepted the qualifying offer in an effort to take full control of his career, a career that will not be set in Brooklyn for much longer. He has watched peers feature on playoff teams and sign contracts that approach $40 million in annual value, only to complete his rookie contract to collect dust in the bureaucratic hell of restricted free agency as the franchise he grew up in declines to pay him what he feels he’s owed.
The Nets do not believe in Cam Thomas as much as he believes in himself. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, voicing the opinion of many Nets fans after seeing Charania’s reporting, does not believe in Thomas to that extent either…
You may feel that Thomas is leaving millions on the table, that he’s not going to find a boatload of lucrative offers in 2026 free agency. I feel the same. But I’ll leave it to you to convince Cam Thomas of all people that, actually, he’s not as good as he thinks he is.
The Brooklyn Nets aren’t winning anything over the next two seasons. They could pay Thomas $30 million in annual salary through 2027 and it would have a negligible effect on the long-term health of this rebuild. But it seems that General Manager Sean Marks is (rightly) worried that Thomas at $20 or $30 million a year is a negative asset in an NBA that seems less fond of small, score-first, score-second guards than ever. Even at $15 million, Brooklyn still hedged their bets by offering a team option on the second year, per Charania’s reporting.
Decision-makers in the organization, privately and publicly, have always stood by Thomas. We’ve noted Keith Smith’s article on Spotrac plenty, in which he quotes a Nets coach: “We love Cam. We think he’s one of the best scoring guards in the league, and an underrated playmaker. We’ll see what happens, but our feelings about Cam as a player and person have never wavered. We love him.”
Now, that’s very nice. But the Nets are indeed the team that slashed his minutes after he became the youngest player to ever score 40+ in three straight games. They are the team that Thomas has expressed frustration with given his minutes and his role…
And now, in Thomas’ view, they are the team that has chosen to lowball him. Now, I’m still not sure the Nets have done much wrong — Thomas has serious flaws as a player, though I do think he can bring nice value to an offense for $6 million — but it’s not hard to see where the 2021 first-round draft pick is coming from.
Earlier this summer, we reported that although the two sides were far apart, the Brooklyn Nets were not worried about reaching a deal with Cam Thomas: “Brooklyn does not seem to believe Thomas would pull that trigger [the QO] and almost certainly expects to engage further with Thomas over the coming weeks.”
I probably should have used different verbiage there. Has Thomas ever been one to turn down a shot?
Maybe Brooklyn and Thomas did return to the negotiating table, maybe they didn’t. In any case, it appears both we and the Nets front office underestimated just how serious CT was here, how willing he was to leave millions of dollars on the table. Self-confidence has never been the problem with him, and other league sources are anything but surprised.
“Cam Thomas get the QO to no surprise. Can’t imagine how many shots he’s going to take this year,” we quoted one league source as saying.
Cam Thomas drew his line in the sand on Thursday, right on top of the qualifying offer’s dotted line. Whether or not Brooklyn can find a trade partner that suits all three parties this season (including CT and his NTC), Thomas’ Nets career is coming to a close. We have arrived at the epilogue, and what a strange epilogue it will be. As the above source suggests, Thomas will likely want to take a million shots this season, boosting his value in unrestricted free agency the best way he knows how. But how different, really, could that look from the way he normally plays?
The more interesting question is what the hell the Nets have to gain from having Thomas on the court at all in 2025-26. What benefit does it provide Brooklyn to have him play a single minute ahead of any of their rookies, or Dariq Whitehead and Keon Johnson for that matter. He’s better than those guys, you might say. Well, they’re tanking. What else?
Even in the unlikely scenario Sean Marks & Co. still view Thomas as part of the long-term future, shouldn’t Brooklyn try to suppress his minutes and counting stats, as Erik Slater and Michael Scotto point out on their reaction podcast?
I am morbidly fascinated to see how the Cam Thomas saga develops this season. He and the Nets are now searching for completely different outcomes in the 2025-26 season. What could meeting in the middle possibly look like? I do not envy Jordi Fernández, boy I tell ya.
I suppose this was the inevitable ending for Cam Thomas and the Brooklyn Nets. It’s not that the team never believed in him — they drafted him, after all.
It’s that the Brooklyn Nets didn’t believe in Cam Thomas the way Cam Thomas believes in Cam Thomas. Then again, maybe nobody does.
