Brooklyn Nets: Reviewing the DeMarre Carroll trade after one season

After being dumped onto the Brooklyn Nets’ payroll, it’s time to review DeMarre Carroll’s first season with the team, and whether or not the trade was beneficial to the franchise.

Last summer, several NBA teams were looking to move money around to further their current rosters. The salary cap wasn’t (and still isn’t) rising astronomically like it did in the 2015 and 2016 offseasons, which made for a slew of money-crunching deals. The Brooklyn Nets were one of the beneficiaries of this conundrum, because they had oodles of cap space and no incentive to keep it open.

The Toronto Raptors were in that boat of penny-pinchers as well, so they traded DeMarre Carroll to Brooklyn with a first and second round pick attached (Brooklyn sent back Justin Hamilton, who has yet to be seen in the NBA since). Toronto needed the cap space to extend Serge Ibaka, a stretch big who they thought was the missing piece for their club.

On the flip side, Brooklyn needed assets. That’s not any sort of news to regular followers of the Nets, as the team has not controlled its own first round pick since approximately 300 B.C. Necessity is the mother of invention though, and the front office conceived a frugal way to acquire assets.

The trade was not really for Carroll himself; the Nets needed the picks exponentially more. Sure it doesn’t hurt to add a 3-and-D wing, but he doesn’t exactly match up with the franchise’s timeline. That’s why the trade was so easy for Toronto to make in the first place; if he were young, like fellow teammate and salary dump casualty Allen Crabbe, they wouldn’t have exported so much value with his contract.

The picks that Brooklyn received ended up at 29th and 40th overall in the 2018 NBA Draft. Obviously these picks aren’t likely to warrant franchise-changing players, but nonetheless they are chances to add solid pieces to a respectable young core. Anytime a team can acquire draft picks by exporting practically nothing, it’s a win.

Not to mention, Carroll was also one of the Nets’ best players in 2017-18. He averaged 13.7 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game — all career highs. But his real value was as a stable 3-and-D wing, the very thing every team in the NBA covets.

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At 37.1 percent from downtown on a healthy 5.4 attempts per game, Carroll was one of the few steady floor-spacers. Other players had respectable`3-point clips, but Carroll managed to rip twine in all but 13 of his 73 appearances this past season. That, my dudes, is consistency.

His presence on the defensive end was no slouching matter either. He often guarded the best starter on the other team, barring switches. His 6’8″, 215-pound frame gives him a lot of flexibility on the defensive end, which is inherently valuable to a team that switches quite often. He exhibited such versatility by earning 1.8 defensive win shares. For a team that was uninspiring on the point-preventing end, Carroll’s adaptability still managed to stand out.

At times throughout the year, it was easy to question why no one had offered Brooklyn a trade for him. He is exactly the type of player every team needs: a two-way wing. Coach Kenny Atkinson didn’t have to accommodate for him on either end, as he was just solid on both. He was rock solid, and you couldn’t ask for much more from him.

The reason no one made a serious offer for Carroll is the same reason Toronto traded so much to eschew him. Few teams can afford to absorb salaries like Carroll’s, and those teams would rather use their cap space elsewhere. `

Next season will be where the trade rumors start to heat up. He’s an expiring contract in 2018-19, which is an asset in this salary cap climate. That could mean even more to gain for the Nets, a team that received assets just to pay Carroll. If something along those lines happens, this trade will be a pillage of domino effects.

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Even if he doesn’t translate into more assets, the ones Brooklyn got to begin with are cause to celebrate. Two draft picks plus the role player every team needs, and all I have to do is pay him? Sign me up. This trade gets an A from me, with A+ potential down the line.