It’s a simple math equation.
NBA teams can take only 15 players on guaranteed contracts into the regular season, plus another two prospects who will spend a large chunk of the season in the G-League. Yet, entering a season with heightened championship expectations, the Nets are one over. They have 16 players for 15 spots.
Someone must go.
What’s more complicated, however, is deciding who that someone will be. The Big 3 are bulletproof as are the next 10 players on the roster: Joe Harris, Patty Mills, Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul Millsap, Bruce Brown, Nicolas Claxton, James Johnson and rookies Cam Thomas and Day’Ron Sharpe.
That leaves three players with the most at stake as training camp nears.
G JEVON CARTER
Carter arrived in Brooklyn as part of the Landry Shamet trade to the Suns. He is a bulldog point guard known most for his defensive abilities. He is also a career 37% three-point shooter and shot 42% from deep in the 2019-20 season.
That edge on defense and improved three-point stroke, however, didn’t help him earn any additional playing time in Phoenix. On a surprise championship contender, Carter appeared only in garbage time in the playoffs, buried on the bench behind Chris Paul and Cameron Payne.
The situation in Brooklyn leaves even fewer minutes for Carter, which makes him a chopping block candidate. James Harden is the team’s full-time point guard, and Kyrie Irving is the team’s full-time shooting guard. Both are expected to play at least 35 minutes per game, and both can fill in for each other, meaning the Nets can and will shift Harden to the two or Irving to the one, depending on the lineup.
The Nets also signed Patty Mills, the longtime Spurs sixth man who joins Brooklyn after leading Team Australia to a bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics. Mills is slated to play nearly every point guard minute that Harden and Irving don’t, meaning Carter will be hard-pressed to find minutes at the one on this roster.
It’s also hard to justify minutes for the 6-foot-1 Carter at the two, where he’ll be undersized for the matchup nine times out of 10. Given how loaded the team is at the one, cutting a reserve guard makes sense over any other position.
If the Nets were to cut Carter, though, it would mean they traded Shamet away explicitly for the No. 29 pick in this year’s draft. The Nets surrendered the 19th pick in the 2020 NBA Draft to land Shamet, which means if they cut Carter, they gave that pick up solely to move back 10 spots in a later draft class.
F DEANDRE BEMBRY
To the naked eye, Bembry is the easy chopping block candidate, and for good reason: Only $750,000 of his $1.9 million contract is guaranteed. Another $500,000 guarantees on Dec. 15, meaning the luxury tax-riddled Nets can save a couple million if they waive him ahead of the regular season.
But a loaded Nets team finds themselves oddly thin on the wings, where Bembry has played alongside other stars — Trae Young and John Collins in Atlanta, Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam in Toronto — throughout his career.
After Harris, who is projected to start at the three unless the Nets go big and start two of Aldridge, Millsap or Griffin next to the Big 3, the team doesn’t have a legitimate backup three-and-D wing.
Bembry, too, lacks a reliable three-point shot, making him a more slender rendition of Brown, whose minutes are already etched into the Nets’ rotation after his standout play last season. A role player who mirrors another role player’s skill set can be filed as expendable.
The Nets, though, need all the energy players they can get, especially after waiving Alize Johnson. Bembry is a high-energy, defensive-minded wing who Brown remembers guarding him the full 94-foot length of the floor in their 2018 NBA pre-draft workouts.
Bembry’s partial guarantee makes him an easy cut, but he brings another player with a scrappy mentality, and an overloaded offensive team can never have too many players like him.
Until, that is, they’re running low on roster spots.
F SEKOU DOUMBOUYA
Sekou Doumbouya is the mystery man the Nets received from the Pistons in the DeAndre Jordan trade. Detroit drafted Doumbouya 15th overall in the 2019 NBA Draft. Yet the third-year player from Guinea has not done much to separate himself from the pack in his draft class. He has averaged just five points and three rebounds despite getting steady playing time as a reserve, with a few starts under his belt.
Complicating matters for Doumbouya and the Nets is his contract situation: He is entering the third year of his rookie deal, which means he becomes extension eligible this year. He is owed $3.6 million this season — a larger salary than several other players slotted higher above him on the depth chart — and if the Nets want to keep him beyond this season, the team option to do so is worth $5.5 million.
Even if the Nets do keep him on the roster this season, it is unlikely they re-sign him long-term given the price that could cost factoring in the luxury tax.
The Nets, though, are balancing a championship-contending present with a promising future, ostensibly built around lighting-rod scorer Cam Thomas and big men Nicolas Claxton and Day’Ron Sharpe. If GM Sean Marks sees Doumbouya as part of that future, there’s a chance the Nets could move to keep him.
It’s safe to say Doumbouya hasn’t scratched the surface of his full potential: He has shown his chops as a versatile defender capable of switching onto guards and rotating for weak side help at the rim on the same possession.
Doumbouya, though, has not had the rebounding numbers you’d like to see out of a player at his position, averaging just under three boards in about 17 minutes per game in his first two seasons. It’s also hard to see him fitting anywhere into the rotation: If the Nets keep a lineup similar to last season’s, Durant will start at the four and play most of his minutes there. James Johnson will play his minutes at the four, meaning Doumbouya would have to compete with a culture-setting veteran for the few minutes available with Durant on the bench.
Suddenly, that simple math equation just became a calculus formula. The Nets only have to cut one player, but weighing the pros and cons of each decision can drive one mental. They have some time: Training camp kicks off in San Diego on Sept. 27 and the preseason begins in Los Angeles on Oct. 3 against the Lakers.
The games officially count on Oct. 19, when the Nets open their season against the same Milwaukee Bucks team that upset them in the second round of the playoffs. Decisions must be made by then, and don’t rule out a trade for future pick consideration from Marks, whose out-of-the-box thinking has helped the Nets become a championship contender in the span of a half decade.