The Brooklyn Nets announced the signing of Moe Wagner Friday morning, giving them 15 guaranteed contracts and more significantly. almost certainly ending their off-season. The two-year, $19 million deal, effectively exhausts their cap space for the 2026 off-season and puts a period on their summer moves, barring a big surprise. As Yossi Gozlan of Third Apron tweeted about the 6’11” 29-year-old’s deal…
That means Sean Marks & co. can use the MLE at the February trade deadline, giving them some additional flexibility. Any option to improve things down the line is welcome to fans. Here’s why:
The Nets live in a tough neighborhood. We’re not talking about Prospect Heights in particular or Brooklyn in general. It’s the NBA’s Eastern Conference and the Atlantic Division that’s so dangerous, particularly for fans who have sat through two years of tanking and before that two years of collapse as the Big Three went their separate ways.
A walk through the East requires peering anxiously at every corner. Peril lurks everywhere. The New York Knicks are defending champs; The Philadelphia 76ers acquired one All-NBA player, Jaylen Brown, in a glorified salary dump then signed another, LeBron James, for gods sake, to the vets minimum. The Miami Heat traded for Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Toronto Raptors will (likely) see the return of Kawhi Leonard. Speaking of returns, the Indiana Pacers are anxiously awaiting Tyrese Haliburton, last seen in the 2025 NBA Finals.
Yes, it’s daunting. While the Nets are no longer tanking — it would make no sense with the Houston Rockets likely to have their pick in the 2027 Draft, which gets awful reviews on top of that — the rebuild is ongoing. They are likely to have once again the youngest roster in the league, with an average age not much higher than the 23.3 years old they registered last season. Indeed, they were the youngest player in the NBA in more than 20 years. They may also lead the league in cap space as well as well as future draft picks.
Their big positives in the off-season so far have been the acquisition of Julius Randle in the Nic Claxton trade, and Mikel Brown Jr. in the draft as well as Egor Demin’s development. They also added some veterans, like Wagner and Keon Ellis who have defensive cachet. On the other hand, they had to be disappointed at the development (or the lack thereof) of the final three picks of the 2025 Draft. And although they’re happy with who they got with the 8th and 6th picks in the last two drafts, bad luck in the lottery still stings.
Bottom line, though, is that they did not stray from their organic path: using an accumulation of draft picks plus development and good fortune to create a cap environment that will permit them to be opportunistic when big players become available … without having to worry about luxury taxes, repeater taxes, the first or second aprons. And they will not make big acquisitions unless it will, as Marks has said, “automatically and absolutely change the trajectory of your team.” There’s no desire, he’s also said, to be stuck in the purgatory of a sixth or seventh seed. There’s also a few requirements for individual acquisitions: positional size, versatility, athleticism and high character …. Jordi-ball … that became evident. ( You’d have thought Peyton Watson might have been an ideal addition, particularly with the team’s highest paid player opening recruiting him. Not so. He apparently doesn’t meet that “automatically and absolutely” qualification and he probably will be expensive.)
There should be no surprise that the Nets did what they did — or didn’t do — this off-season, whether you agree or disagree. As C.J. Holmes in the Daily News noted this week in quoting Marks in various summertime venues.
Here’s what he said after the Nets fell to the sixth pick in the draft lottery. No rush.
“For us, it’ll still be about having patience,” he said in Chicago. “But at the end of the day, we’ve got optionality, we’ve maintained flexibility, we’ve got the cap space and assets. So I think the word would be opportunistic.”
At Summer League, he reiterated the stance.
“Something we’ve always prided ourselves on with how we’ve built is not using up all our flexibility. … I like the roster we have. … I don’t think we’re in any immediate rush to do anything and add more pieces,” he said in Las Vegas.
The plan for the future depends a lot on the franchise’s faith in Jordi Fernandez. They are all-in and in his speech to the citizens of his hometown of Badalona, Spain, he intimated the feeling is mutual. He said he wanted to retire from coaching in Brooklyn. Considering that he’s 43 years, that’s quite the commitment.
One has to assume that the Nets brass is looking for a scrappy team this season in the mold of their coach, one led by two players won’t be able to buy a drink legally in New York until well into the season and two other players who can put up 20 a game with ease but whose excess baggage fees have been high. (We generally think the acquisition of Randle has been underrated. So did a vast majority of the fan base as our poll showed.).
The franchise understands that the rebuild is getting old in a lot of ways, but so far the fanbase seems generally patient. That’s a good thing.
