After signing Travis Outlaw, the Nets aren’t done collecting wing players. They have now turned their attention to Warriors’ restricted free agent Anthony Morrow. Morrow and the Nets agreed to a deal that would play the undrafted wing player $12 million over the course of three years, according to Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
This is a real good deal for the Nets because it is a reasonable amount of money for a sharpshooting wing. However, it is so reasonable that I think the Warriors have a good chance of matching it. Wojnarowski says that’s not the case:
The Golden State Warriors aren’t expected to match the offer, a league source said. They have seven days to make a decision after Morrow officially signs the sheet.
…
With the franchise in financial flux because of an impending sale and having just committed $80 million to forward David Lee(notes), the Warriors aren’t expected to spend to keep Morrow.
I will eagerly be counting down the days. I personally think that the Warriors “shrugging off” of Marrow could be a smokescreen. This is because if teams know a restricted free agent will have his offer matched, they will just jack up the offers forcing teams to pay big if they want to keep their guy. The Nets could have signed Morrow to a good deal thinking that the Warriors won’t match, just to have the Warriors turn around and match it (This is kind of what happened with Marcin Gortat last year).
As what this signing would mean for the Nets, I don’t want to get too much into it in case the Warriors do match, but this works. Morrow is a sharpshooter that will spread the court and keep teams honest (no more zone with Morrow on the court). Also, this signing tells me one of two things. Either that the Nets are comfortable enough using Terrence Williams as a backup point guard with Outlaw and Morrow on the wings, or the Nets are loading up on wings because they are looking to deal one or two of them. In my opinion (just my opinion, I have no sources) the latter is more than likely the case. The Nets now will have Terrence Williams, Damion James, Travis Outlaw, Anthony Morrow, and Courtney Lee on their roster as wing players. All five of these guys seem like they can come in and contribute right away, but there doesn’t seem to be enough time for all of them. All five of these guys have pretty good contracts (with 3 of the 5 still on their rookie deal), so that is a lot of attractive assets the Nets could include in a trade.
However, we might be getting ahead of ourselves. Hopefully we can revisit this in seven days…
