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The Brooklyn Nets have made their decision to enter a full rebuild after trading Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks last season for forward Bojan Bogdanovic and as many as five first-round picks. Now that Bridges is elsewhere, Brooklyn can focus on the future, including the matters of paying two of their younger players on the roster.
As the Nets navigate their new reality as a team with a boatload of draft picks from now through 2031, the franchise now has to think about which players to invest in as part of their future, which brings up guard Cam Thomas and center Day’Ron Sharpe. Both are eligible for extensions this summer, but NBA salary cap expert Yossi Gozlan recently explained why Brooklyn may be better served to wait on those extensions.
“They’re (the Nets) in a position to generate somewhere between $30 (million) to $50 million in cap space. I could see them moving on from Dorian Finney-Smith at some point which could help further increase those projections. Now, some of these (projections) factor in Cam Thomas and Day’Ron Sharpe making it to restricted free agency.” Gozlan said.
Essentially, what Gozlan is explaining is that if Brooklyn were to extend Thomas and Sharpe this offseason, those extensions would lower their cap space for the 2025 offseason when the free-agent class is expected to be more star-studded than this summer.
For example, Thomas’ restricted free-agent cap hold next summer will be $12.1 million, but if the Nets were to extend him this offseason for $25 million per year, that means that Brooklyn goes into next summer with $12.9 million less than they would have if they waited to extend Thomas in 2025.
Granted, Gozlan made his video on the matter prior to the Nets trading Bridges away and re-signing center Nic Claxton to a four-year, $100 million deal so it’s likely now that Brooklyn isn’t worried about next offseason’s free-agent class.
However, as Gozlan also points out, if the Nets accomplish everything that they want to this summer, there’s also no reason for them not to extend Thomas and Sharpe if the organization views them as building blocks for the future.