Are the Brooklyn Nets one of the more desperate teams as the NBA nears the trade deadline? SB Nation’s Tom Ziller thinks so, listing them as the fifth-most desperate team to make a deal as the deadline approaches.
He writes:
Brooklyn is currently inside the playoff bracket with a small cushion. But I’m not sure a No. 7-seed is good enough, and there’s a chance that another injury to a team filled with players who have recently struggled with injuries could knock them back out. Mikhail Prokhorov isn’t spending $180 million for a lottery team. He isn’t watching future draft picks go to Boston and Atlanta to watch a 40-loss team. Billy King very well may have four weeks to ensure the team doesn’t crash back down in March and April and that he keeps his job.
-Tom Ziller, SB Nation — The 7 most desperate NBA teams as the trade deadline approaches
I’m pretty sure he’s not referring to the two deals the Nets are expected to announce later today, acquiring Chicago Bulls guard Marquis Teague and a second-round draft pick for second-year players Tornike Shengelia and Tyshawn Taylor.
The Nets are chock-full of big contracts (Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce), but they’ve also got some players on reasonable deals performing well (Andrei Kirilenko, Mirza Teletovic, Shaun Livingston, Alan Anderson).
King is known around the league as a dealer, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise to see the Nets active around the deadline.
But as far as moves go, the biggest thing that they can do that they might actually do is use their Disabled Player Exception, a one-time clause opened by Brook Lopez’s season-ending injury that allows them to trade for a player in the last year of his contract worth up to $5.25 million. Here’s their options with that exception.
