NetsDaily Off-Season Report – No. 9

Every weekend, we’ll be updating the Nets’ off-season with bits and pieces of information, gossip, etc. to help fans get ready for … whatever.

The big news overnight Saturday was not the New York Liberty’s first loss of the WNBA season. The Libs were missing two starters, after all. Bummer though.

No, it was Shams Charania’s report that Kevin Durant’s preferences for what could be his final destination are the Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs and the Houston Rockets, with the very unsubtle message to GMs that if you’re not in that small circle, forget signing him beyond next season. He’ll be a rental and you have will have given up a lot of assets for a one-time chance at a title.

The Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets are Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant’s preferred trade destinations, sources told ESPN on Saturday night. People across the NBA have been made aware in recent days that those are the three teams Durant would commit to with a long-term extension.

Durant is on an expiring $54.7 million deal for the 2025-26 season, and the Suns have made clear to the six to eight seriously interested teams that they will make the best deal for the franchise, even if it means trading Durant to a team outside his preferred list, sources said.

What was unsaid, or unwritten, is the motivation for this Saturday night scoop? It would appear that the Suns are talking to another team or teams, maybe the Minnesota Timberwolves? Brian Windhorst and Marc Stein both reported that the Los Angeles Clippers and Toronto Raptors might be “lurking,” as Windy put it. Shams has said six to eight teams made initial inquiries. Stein said the New York Knicks dropped out.

On Friday, speaking on the Pat McAfee Show, Shams reported that a deal could be imminent — “next few days” — and he noted that “in the past 24-to-48 hours, I’m told the focus on the Suns conversations has been on a few teams: Houston Rockets, Miami Heat, Minnesota Timberwolves.” (Emphasis ours.) No Spurs, it should be noted. It also should be noted that Shams didn’t reference his own comments on the McAfee Show in the overnight report. Sigh.

So what does this mean for the Brooklyn Nets role as a facilitator? We’re told that within the KD negotiations, there are multiple scenarios as well as multiple teams and that in some of those scenarios the Nets, with their virtual monopoly on cap space and 31 draft picks — 28 tradeable, would be needed. In others they would not.

As Brian Lewis noted…

It would appear — and we have no pretense of expertise in capology — that the Spurs would need the least help from the Nets in any KD deal. They have the assets and are in the best place cap-wise. Minnesota and Miami would probably need the most. Houston somewhere in the middle and no, do not even ask us to speculate on some Rockets deal with all the intertwining pieces the two share. It would break our brains into many pieces.

Have Sean Marks & co. engaged in talks with the Suns or the KD suitors? We don’t know and it might not matter, at least yet. These deals often come together in 24 to 48 hours and as we have pointed out ad finitum, the Sean Marks Draft Trade Zone opens 48 hours before Adam Silver steps to the podium on Draft Night, which is still a week from Wednesday. In NBA terms that’s an eternity.

We do find a bit of irony in all this intrigue. Actually a lot of irony. Back in 2023, after the failure of the Big Three experiment, Durant told Joe Tsai he wanted out and wanted Phoenix which he thought (wrongly and in spectacular fashion) was his best shot of adding to his considerable legacy.

Mat Ishbia who had been Tsai’s protege in the ownership process and was in his very first day as owner gleefully agreed. Marks and James Jones, his counterpart in Phoenix, worked out the details. The Nets got what they wanted in every aspect of the talks, from Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, two young players who had been key pieces in the 2021 NBA Finals, to four unprotected firsts to Jae Crowder who they turned into pieces needed in salary dumps of Joe Harris and Patty Mills.

Now, after being swept in the first round of the 2024 playoffs and failing to make the post-season this year, it certainly appears that Ishbia and the Suns are not working as closely with Durant and his business partner, Rich Kleiman, as Tsai did. Be careful what you wish for, Kevin.

Later Sunday, Shams dropped another bomb: the Memphis Grizzlies are trading Desmond Bane to the Orlando Magic for a package that rivals the Knicks’ package for Mikal Bridges. Per Shams:

The Memphis Grizzlies are trading Desmond Bane to the Orlando Magic for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Cole Anthony, four unprotected first-round picks and one first-round pick swap, sources told ESPN on Sunday.

Orlando is sending Memphis the No. 16 pick in the 2025 NBA draft, its 2026 first-round pick (which includes swap rights with the Phoenix Suns or Washington Wizards) and its 2028 and 2030 unprotected first-round selections, sources said. The pick swap is top-two protected in 2029.

Yikes. Putting aside the obvious shock value, does the trade signal anything for the Nets? It could. If Bane is worth four firsts and a couple of good players, how much is Cam Johnson worth? At the deadline, Marks reportedly believed that CamJ was worth two first round picks but didn’t get any takers although he said he wasn’t making calls just taking them. What if he was?

Bane is a better all-around player. He is also three years younger and is more durable, stronger too. Our Lukas Kaplan argues Bane was the most underrated player in the NBA last season and he may be right. (Spoiler alert: he usually is.) Johnson has some positives in the comparison. He and Bane put up almost identical shooting numbers: Both shot 48/39/89 in 32 minutes, once you round off the numbers. Bane was both a better rebounder and passer, although not by much. Johnson is a bit better in post-season, but again not by much. Johnson may be a bit more efficient and is a leader in the locker room.

But here’s the difference. The Magic see Bane as the final piece for a championship contender. They were the worst 3-point shooting team in the NBA and that’s been an issue for a while. Bane is an enormous help in that regard. Is there a GM who sees CamJ as the final piece? A number of contenders certainly liked him at the deadline but none were willing to lay down two firsts for him. So the answer is probably no. But two firsts? One and a prospect. We will have to wait and see.

Of course, the package the Magic gave up may simply be an overpay. It only takes one GM to fall in love with a player. It’s not about a consensus. Considering how quickly things are moving, we may not have to wait long to find out!

Tsai’s growing role in sports

One thing we keep track of outside NetsWorld is Joe Tsai’s continuing investment in professional sports, some of it well-known, some not so much. The reasoning is simple: the Nets remain his core piece and what he does elsewhere can be telling.

There is the 85% ownership of BSE Global which covers the Brooklyn Nets, the New York Liberty and Barclays Center as well as the retail space at the base of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank and a minority stake in the Brooklyn Paramount, both of which no doubt are destined to be part of the somewhat mysterious “ecosystem” centered on — but not limited to — the corner of the Flatbush and Atlantic.

Recently, Joe and Clara Wu Tsai sold a piece of the Liberty — reportedly a “mid-teens” piece — to a group of investors led by Jack Ma, the Chinese billionaire and a co-founder with Joe of Alibaba, for an undisclosed price. It will be used to help defray the cost of the Libs’ new $80 million training facility in Greenpoint … just as they sold 15% of BSE to members of the Koch family to help with a $100 million upgrade at Barclays Center.

But that’s just the Brooklyn piece of the Tsais’ sports assets. There’s also a two percent piece of the Miami Dolphins as well as Hard Rock Stadium and an Formula One circuit; a small piece of the LAFC in the MLS; the Las Vegas and San Diego franchises in the National Lacrosse League (indoor) and a chunk of the unitary Premier Lacrosse League (outdoor).

There was also a 2019 investment — along with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and others — in G2 Sports, a Berlin-based esports company. More recently, like last month, Tsai became the lead investor in the Asian University Basketball League, a 12-team college league across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. We’ve reported on all this before.

But wait there’s more! The Tsai family investment office, Blue Pool Capital, has also put money in what might be called ancillary sports services: a piece of Fanatics, the sports merchandise company; a piece of Genius Sports, which provides sports data to virtually every pro league and a piece of Golden Goose, the Italian luxury shoe wear. Will a Nets player sign up with Golden Goose? (Interesting footnote on Fanatics investment. As a result of the relationship between the Tsais and Fanatics founder Michael Rubin, Clara Wu Tsai joined him in the REFORM Alliance, the Meek Mill-inspired group that lobbies for parole and probation reform across the U.S. Wu Tsai reportedly donated $8 million to the effort.)

In most cases, the Tsais’ investments have been about helping entrepreneurs expand their business in Asia, the market Joe Tsai knows best.

We don’t know the current status of those investments or others Blue Pool might have made out of the spotlight but Ollie Weisberg, who runs Blue Pool, made it clear last year that they see sports as an asset class of its own.

“When I think about about my marginal dollar today, sports is at the top of the list. Sports has become an actual asset class now,” Weisberg, who’s also an alternate governor of the Nets, told Asian Investor magazine.

“We believe that the rising interest in live sports, and the increasing growth in media rights, that’s something we’re super excited about. It’s not just the NFL, the NBA, the NHL. It’s women’s soccer, women’s basketball.”

Profits are obviously good. The valuation of the Nets is up 50% since he bought out Mikal Prokhorov in 2019. The valuation of the Liberty is up a lot more than that over that same period. Ask James Dolan if he’s not too busy being rejected by another NBA team in his coaching search.

Joe Tsai’s interest in sports also extends to his role as chairman of Alibaba. Just this week, he told a Paris tech conference about the role Alibaba’s cloud and AI businesses play on sports biggest stage.

The company has been the International Olympic Committee’s cloud technology provider for the past three Olympic cycles, including the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“One of the areas that we focus on is broadcasting,” Tsai said, noting that the Olympics generate tens of thousands of hours of footage. “So what the IOC have done is they centralize the filming of the Games, and they take all that footage, put it onto the cloud.” For the Paris Olympics alone, that meant managing around 11,000 hours of video, China Daily quoted him as saying.

“Last Olympics was the first time cloud technology had overtaken satellite broadcasting technology, and that technology is all supported by Alibaba,” Tsai said.

Specifically, Alibaba used AI to generate multi-angle views of action scenes with far fewer cameras than traditional methods.

In other words, the Nets and Liberty may have been his first entree into sports but it won’t be his last. Watch this space.

Draft Sleeper of the Week

Last month, we included Hugo Gonzalez in our round-up of international prospects. As we noted then,

The player with the most mentions in our most recent mock draft roundup, domestic or international, was a smart, athletic 6’7” Spanish wing, Hugo Gonzalez, who was linked to the Nets at four of the five draft positions, missing out only at No. 8.

Since then, Gonzales flew to Treviso for a workout of seven prospects whose international team commitments may not make it possible for them to engage in individual workouts at NBA training facilities. The make-up combine included measurements and Gonzalez’s shone.

The 19-year-old Spaniard measured 6’6¼” barefoot and 222.7 pounds with a 6’10¾” wingspan, 8’5½” standing reach and 9” x 10¼” hands. The numbers that stood out to draftniks were his all-around size for an NBA wing.

He is a legit 6’7” and he weighed in 15 pounds heavier than he was listed a year ago. His hand size — the length and span of a player’s hand, measured from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the pinky (length) and across the palm from the thumb side to the pinky side — is comparable to LeBron James, roughly the equivalent of a 7-footer. Tied for the biggest hands in the draft class.

The measurements just added more intrigue to his possibilities as an NBA prospect. He’s been a cornerstone of the Spanish national team youth programs for years and as late as two years ago, he was being compared favorably to Cooper Flagg. (Don’t get too excited. Lenny Cooke of Old Tappan, N.J. was also rated higher than Lebron James at a similar point in their careers. Lenny who?, you might ask. Exactly.)

Still everyone saw his potential back then…

Indeed in a head-to-head contest back in the 2022 FIBA U17 World Cup, Gonzalez helped Spain earn a silver against Team USA, leading Spain with 16 points to Flagg’s 10. (If you’re a hoops sicko and interested in watching the whole game, here’s the tape including that nice dunk above by Gonzales 23:00 in.)

What makes it hard to judge him as a prospect now is that Real Madrid has kept him pretty much under wraps in part because the players ahead of him in the RM rotation are all former NBA types: players like Dzana Musa and Mario Hezonja. So he’s only getting about 10 minutes a game. In fact, he only played five minutes in the Real Madrid game last October that B.J. Johnson and Simone Casali were seen watching in the SCOUT docu-series .

We also wonder if Gonzalez has a buyout and how much. That could matter to some teams as they evaluate where to project him. Real Madrid is notorious for putting big NBA buyouts in their young prospects’ contracts. The NBA permits teams that draft international prospects to pay off buyout, but within limits For the 2024-2025 season, this amount was $850,000. Any amount exceeding this limit is considered a signing bonus and is included in the team’s salary cap calculation.

Adding to recent hype. ESPN on Saturday said Gonzalez has the best motor (as well as the biggest hands!) in the 2025 draft class, noting as well his defensive chops.

Gonzalez’s role at Real Madrid has been inconsistent — typical for a teenage prospect trying to break through at one of the world’s top clubs — but his calling card as a player has long been the fact he plays exceptionally hard. That manifests on the defensive end, where he embraces doing the dirty work: playing in passing lanes, hustling for rebounds and even chipping in highlight blocks. He’ll run the floor hard in transition going the other way, and is always willing to sacrifice his own body for the good of the team.

The level of want and desire Gonzalez plays with has always been endearing for scouts, and has helped him earn increased trust and minutes over the past month. His sporadic offensive production has made it difficult to improve his stock over the past year, but NBA teams know what type of effort he brings, giving him a chance to carve out a role in due time.

One other thing to consider: ICYMI, the Nets head coach is the first Spanish head coach in NBA history. Jordi Fernandez may have spent most of his career in the NBA, but you can be sure he follows Spanish basketball and he has called Spanish national team coach Sergio Scariolo his “basketball father.” Scariolo has coached Gonzalez. Just sayin’.

And of course the highlight package, courtesy of Jonathan Givony of ESPN and Draft Express.

Final Note

The Shams scoops earlier Sunday signals that the NBA trade season is underway. We were wrong to think that big trades would wait until after the NBA Finals are complete. That could be Sunday if the series, one of the best in recent memory, goes seven games. And the possibility of a Kevin Durant trade in the next few days as Shams reported would really accelerate things. So put on your Nets rally caps.

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