Goodbye, Joe Harris, longest-tenured Net. Diminished sharpshooter traded in salary dump. Other departures help team rebuild--or, at least, save money.

It's a business, of course, so the Brooklyn Nets jettisoned their longest-tenured player--hampered by injuries and with an onerous contract--to manage their rebuild.

As Substack columnist Steve Lichtenstein put it, Sentiment Aside, Harris Trade Was Proper Business Decision For Nets:

It couldn’t have been easy for Sean Marks to sign off on the reported trade of wing Joe Harris to Detroit. For if a single player embodied how the Nets general manager was able to rebuild a franchise from ashes, it was Harris.

However, it had to be done, with some folks possibly arguing it came a few years too late. In order to dump Harris’ approximately $19.9 million salary, the last of a 4-year, $75 million deal he signed in the 2020 offseason, Brooklyn had to grease the Pistons’ wheels with a pair of second-round picks—one in 2027 via Dallas and the other in 2029 that originated with Milwaukee.

In other words, the Nets essentially paid the Pistons to take the aging (nearly 32), diminished Harris. That gave the team the salary flexibility to re-sign restricted free agent Cam Johnson.

Changes, changes

Harris arrived in July 2016 as a low-salary, low-risk player, who became the NBA's three-point shot leader in two seasons and even winning the three-point contest at the 2019 NBA All-Star Game. Wrote Lichtenstein:

That Harris managed to survive all the turbulence of those seven seasons—from laughingstock to plucky go-getters, followed by the short-lived Big 3 era and its destruction—speaks volumes about his character and professionalism. The title of the continuous longest-serving Net now belongs to center Nic Claxton, who is entering his fifth season.

Nic Claxton, Brooklyn lifer? We'll see. He has trade value. 

That's why the Brooklyn Nets, for example, on Twitter, emphasize "The Brooklyn Way" and other amorphous associations with the borough.

What next?

Since then, as Lichtenstein notes today, the Nets lost some other good three-point shooters: "guard Patty Mills was also dealt away for non-player compensation from Houston on Saturday while guard Seth Curry (Dallas) and forward Yuta Watanabe (Phoenix) signed elsewhere in the open market." 

(Mills--another salary dump--won't stay in Houston, apparently.)

What it all means is unclear--just an effort to get the Nets below a luxury tax threshold, or a repositioning to aim for another big player?

Lichtenstein does suggest that team owner (er, Governor) Joe Tsai's ascension to Chairman of Alibaba, which has seen its stock price fall, might make him less willing to spend, but acknowledges it's unclear--after all, Tsai is still doing fine.

As noted by NetsDaily, the Nets are not in the running to get superstar Damian Lillard, but could participate in the trade as a third team.