The Brooklyn Nets had an interesting development within the franchise last season when they had what appeared to be contentious negotiations with guard Cam Thomas, who was looking for his first NBA payday. Brooklyn and Thomas were unable to come to terms on a long-term extension and he chose to play last season on his $6 million qualifying offer (QO). Did the Nets make the right choice?
"There's a lot of more smaller reasons that we can talk about in the story of his career. But, the dude is like 90th percentile in offensive RAPM (rate adjusted plus minus) over the like one, two, three years," NetsDaily's Lucas Kaplan said of Thomas during a recent appearance on the "Locked On Nets" podcast with ClutchPoints' Erik Slater. As of this writing,
Thomas has not signed with a team and training camp is less than one month away.
"it's just crazy how good he can be at that [scoring] and still be and [still] understandably NBA teams [are] not willing to sign up for the Cam Thomas experience," Kaplan said later in his analysis of Thomas' situation. "At some point, what's the line between him being, for example, just an unplayable defender because that's who he is or a guy that's like just not "willing" to do it."
Thomas, 24, is coming off a 2025-26 season in which he averaged 13.5 points, 1.7 rebounds, and 2.6 assists per game while shooting 41.0% from the field and 31.0% from behind the three-point line across his time with the Nets and Milwaukee Bucks. The writing seemed to be on the wall when Thomas chose to play on his QO and once Brooklyn was unable to trade him prior to the February deadline, they decided to waive him.
Thomas went on to sign with the Bucks and seemed to be more efficient in a smaller role as he averaged 10.7 points per game in just 16.6 minutes per contest while shooting 43.1% from the floor. Eventually, Milwaukee decided to move on from Thomas and he hasn't signed with a team since.
Time will tell if Thomas will sign with another team before camp begins, but until then, it's fair to wonder if the Nets handled contract negotiations with him in the proper way given what he has happened in the aftermath.
This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: Did the Nets choose correctly in how they handled Cam Thomas?
