Brooklyn Nets: 3 reasons to not re-sign D’Angelo Russell

3. Paying for a career year

In the past few years, we’ve seen teams reward their own free agents with a max or near-max deal after each player posted career numbers in a contract season. Otto Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and Andre Drummond are all prime examples of this.

All three of these guys are solid NBA players, but not the type of guys teams want to be paying top level money to. The Washington Wizards essentially had to move Porter in a salary dump, while the Detroit Pistons are struggling to build a contender around Blake Griffin partially because Drummond’s massive cap hit is on the books for two more seasons.

The Brooklyn Nets cannot make a similar mistake with D’Angelo Russell and just give him a max deal because he put up All-Star numbers in a contract year.

They must also take into account the first three seasons of Russell’s career. From 2015-16 through 2017-18, Russell shot just 40.9 percent from the field, averaged a paltry 4.3 assists per game and never posted a Player Efficiency Rating above 15.3, which would just barely classify him as a “slightly above-average player” in John Hollinger’s ranking system.

Up until last season, Russell was seen as a “tweener” that lacked a true identity on offense and struggled to defend both quicker point guards and bigger shooting guards.

He also had the infamous misstep involving Nick Young during his time with the Lakers. Now according ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski (via John Schmeelk), Russell is set to receive a max contract this offseason:

There is no denying that D-Lo was one of the league’s most improved players in 2018-19, but if the Nets sign him to a five-year max deal and his production is more in line with that of his first three NBA years, then they are going to be woefully disappointed.