The salary cap and how it affects the Brooklyn Nets’ future

If we’ve learned anything about the NBA recently, cap space has become an asset. The Brooklyn Nets are aware of this, and will continue to be impacted by the cap’s trends going forward.

Once upon a time, the NBA’s salary cap was ever-expanding like a balloon. The television deal between the NBA and TNT, ABC and ESPN resulted in an unprecedented boom in cap space for all 30 franchises.

Every team had approximately max-level cap room available. This is why it appeared as though so many suitors had a chance to sign Kevin Durant. Unfortunately, the Golden State Warriors ultimately coerced him, subsequently forcing the other 29 teams into existential crises.

The teams who wanted to be competitive with Golden State spent like there was no tomorrow, signing middling role players like Allen Crabbe and DeMarre Carroll to egregiously expensive deals. Teams across the association clogged their payrolls as if the cap would continue to rise after the deal was implemented.

But like all balloons, this one popped. The result is approximately every NBA franchise proverbially suffocating from the lack of cap space.

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Some teams have addressed this by jettisoning players who they didn’t want to “bring the Brinks truck” to. Others have attached assets to bad contracts just to get them off the books; the Brooklyn Nets own several byproducts.

The teams who survived the cap congestion and stayed Finals-caliber were the ones who drafted well. Examples include the Toronto Raptors who, despite owing two slow-moving big men over $134 million through 2020, are getting great value from recent draft picks.

Due to this lack of cheap labor, these teams are continuing to try and offload their cap cholesterol. Current examples include the Knicks with Joakim Noah and the Hornets with Nicolas Batum and Marvin Williams.

But with the cap continuing to level off, the few teams with any sort of useful cap space will not be eager to clog it, even if the Hornets attach Kemba Walker.

Why do the Nets care?

So with the current market, the Nets must pay close attention. The front office has done a nice job of collecting assets attached to bad contracts. But when the team tries to approach legitimate contention, they must be able to spend smart.

How we evaluate the talent already on the roster will shape how we analyze future talent. Knowing which pieces need to stick around now, and how monetarily valuable they will be to the franchise, will matter several years down the line.

When the team gets good enough, most of the money will be tied up in a “Big Three” of max salaries. The endeavor of finding those cornerstones will likely be taken on when Brooklyn has its own picks back.

Heck, there might already be some candidates for those slots on the current roster. But the other 12 players need to be paid too, and it’s up to Nets’ brass to value them appropriately.

Just because a team needs a sixth man spark-plug scorer doesn’t mean that team should overpay Jamal Crawford in his 435th season. You don’t pay Meyers Leonard $11 million a year just because you have the ability to do so.

Next: 2017-18 Week 16 NBA Power Rankings

It’s clear that Sean Marks and the rest of the front office know how to extort other teams for their ill-spent money. But the next step is finding out how to spend their own.