The Brooklyn Nets officially announced a trade that sends Andrei Kirilenko, Jorge Gutierrez, a 2020 second-round draft pick, and the right to swap 2018 second-round draft picks to the Philadelphia 76ers for non-guaranteed forward Brandon Davies. The 76ers are expected to waive Kirilenko, who is dealing with a family matter that will keep him away from basketball until at least February or March.
Davies, a 23-year-old power forward, has averaged 6.3 points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 19.0 minutes per game over 20 games this season.
The team structured the trade as two simultaneous trades, which allowed them to create two trade exceptions, one for the value of Kirilenko’s contract and one for the value of Gutierrez’s, each plus $100,000. The Nets now have four trade exceptions, three of which are valued under $1.2 million. Trade exceptions can be used within one year before they expire. In the past, Nets general manager Billy King has referred to exceptions as “another tool in the kit.”
The motivation for the trade appears to be money, and the Nets won out handily on that front: they’ll save roughly $13 million in luxury tax and salary commitments, and have room to shrink more given Davies’s non-guaranteed deal. But the Nets might look to hold onto Davies, and possibly sign another player with their open roster spot. But Kirilenko had fallen out of Lionel Hollins’s rotation anyway, and it isn’t good business to spend $13 million on nothing.
The 76ers are well below the salary *floor*, which is the minimum amount that teams are required to pay their players, and thus the team doesn’t actually take on any added dollars in the deal. But with the Nets looking to cut cost and Kirilenko unplayable, the Nets greased the wheels with the non-guaranteed Gutierrez and two distant second-rounders. The Nets have routinely bought second-round picks in the draft.
