Even after officially re-signing Cam Thomas, Day’Ron Sharpe, and Ziaire Williams, the Nets are still operating slightly below the minimum salary floor, as Bobby Marks of ESPN tweets.
While the exact terms of Williams’ new deal haven’t been confirmed, it sounds like it will be identical to Sharpe’s contract, which includes a cap hit of $6.25MM for 2025/26. That would increase Brooklyn’s team salary to about $138.53MM — this season’s minimum salary floor is $139.18MM, and Marks confirms that the Nets are roughly $649K below the floor.
As we detail in our glossary entry, the minimum salary floor comes in each season at 90% of the salary cap. In the past, a team was required to reach that threshold by the end of the regular season — if it didn’t get there, it was simply required to make up the shortfall by paying the difference to its players.
However, under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, teams must reach the minimum salary floor by the start of the regular season. A team whose salary is below the minimum floor at the start of the season won’t receive a share of the end-of-season luxury tax payouts and will have a portion of its cap room (the amount between its team salary and the minimum floor) frozen.
Last season’s end-of-season payout to non-taxpayers was approximately $11.5MM per team. While there’s no guarantee the 2025/26 payout will be quite that high, it’s safe to assume the Nets won’t simply give up that money, so we can count on them making a move to reach the salary floor by the start of the season.
However, it won’t necessarily be as simple as signing a player to a minimum-salary contract. Four of the 18 players on Brooklyn’s current roster are either on non-guaranteed deals or have small partial guarantees — the Nets will have to set a 15-man roster for the regular season, and if they end up waiving two or three of those players on non-guaranteed contracts, it would further reduce their overall salary, moving the club further away from the minimum floor.
For instance, if the Nets were to cut Tyrese Martin, Drew Timme, and Keon Johnson, it would remove approximately $6.23MM from their books, moving the team about $6.87MM below the minimum salary floor.
If the Nets opt to waive a player or two with a guaranteed salary and keep more of their non-guaranteed contracts, the gap between their team salary and the minimum floor wouldn’t be as significant, but it still may require a free agent signing above the minimum to reach the floor.
While a free agent signing is a possibility, it’s probably more of a last resort, since it would make more sense for Brooklyn to continue using its leftover cap room on the trade market to take on unwanted salary attached to draft assets. The Nets have already taken that route this offseason in deals for Michael Porter Jr. (who was sent to Brooklyn with an unprotected 2032 first-round pick), Terance Mann (with this year’s No. 22 overall pick), and Haywood Highsmith (with a 2032 second-rounder).
The Nets still have $16.1MM in cap room remaining and could further increase that figure by waiving one or more of their players on non-guaranteed salaries.