Details of Joe Johnson trade emerge: Nets agreed to swap 2014, 2015 first-round picks with Atlanta

Well, this is an interesting wrinkle. According to a league source for NetsDaily, the Brooklyn Nets agreed to give the Atlanta Hawks the right to swap their 2014 and 2015 first-round picks as part of the Joe Johnson trade. This part of the deal was previously unreported. The Nets still have the right to trade the picks.

How it was learned: I was approached on Twitter this morning by user @SickBeardGame regarding a weird note on RealGM’s transaction page that noted Atlanta’s right to swap 2014 and 2015 picks with Brooklyn. I dismissed it: RealGM’s been wrong on these transaction pages before, no other outlet had reported this, and if RealGM had a scoop of this magnitude, I presumed they would’ve milked it for all it was worth.

But, as it turns out, it’s true. So mea culpa.

More interesting than me being wrong — which occurs relatively often — is that this part of the deal was not mentioned in the official Nets press release regarding the trade, giving the impression that the Nets still owned all of their first-round picks in full through 2017.

Barring injury, the Nets shouldn’t be giving up any lottery picks with this change — they’re constructed as a playoff team — but if the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that things can change in an instant in the NBA.