Since the Nets franchise moved to Brooklyn, the team has been in luxury tax hell, paying a record-setting $190 million-plus in roster & tax payments in the 2013-14 season and losing a record $144 million in the process.
Since that year, the team has gone into cost-cutting mode — and over a year later, they may finally turn a profit, according to Alex Raskin of the Wall Street Journal citing “several sources within the Nets’ various ownership groups.”
The Nets have cut significant cost. They stand to save close to $60 million in luxury tax and salary alone this season by stretching Williams’s contract, and close to $40 million over the course of the deal.
They’ll also likely have enough salary cap room next offseason to sign a max free agent. But don’t count on that free agent being the prize of next year’s class, former MVP Kevin Durant, per the Wall Street Journal:
When asked about his spending plans for the summer of 2016, King did not make any grandiose promises. Instead of “one superstar,” explained several of those in attendance, King said he was hoping to attract “a couple of really good free agents.”
According to a Nets spokesman, King remembers saying he hopes to acquire “one really good player or maybe three really good ones,” but either way, the Nets seem less interested in doing what it takes to acquire the league’s biggest names. Now King seems content to build around Lopez and Young.
And, as one source within the organization explained, there is no great expectation that the team will land Oklahoma City forward Kevin Durant in 2016, when the former MVP is expected to become a free agent.
Wall Street Journal — The Brooklyn Nets Aim to Be Back in the Black
