For the Brooklyn Nets, their second-round loss to the Milwaukee Bucks served as a microcosm of their season.
In dominant wins in Games 1 and 2, the Nets displayed the brilliance that had them as the favorites to reach the NBA Finals.
However, as with most of the regular season, Brooklyn was rarely at full strength in the series. James Harden left 43 seconds into Game 1 and didn't return until Game 5, by which point he was a shell of himself and was no longer playing alongside Kyrie Irving, who suffered an injury of his own that kept him out for the final three games of the series.
Now, with Harden, Irving and Kevin Durant all eligible for extensions, the Nets head into an offseason with a question of just how much money they should commit to the trio, along with potentially bringing back their own free agents and adding to a hefty luxury tax bill.
Extensions for the Big Three
Brooklyn has a chance to lock up Durant, Harden and Irving long term, but at an expensive price tag. All three players are eligible to sign an extension that would add an additional four seasons beyond 2021-22, keeping them committed to Brooklyn through the 2025-26 season.
However, because of their respective ages, each player is likely to have only one more opportunity to sign a big-money deal, meaning they each could decide to play out the 2021-22 seasons under their existing contracts in hopes of securing even more money next summer.
Although each player is facing the same decision this summer, they have individual nuances that make their choices different, starting with Durant.
Kevin Durant
Durant has earned over $300 million in salary over the course of his career but has made financial concessions at times as it relates to team building.
For example, the below-max contract Durant signed with the Golden State Warriors in 2017 allowed them to re-sign Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston. In 2019, instead of signing with Brooklyn outright, he worked with the Warriors in a sign-and-trade that allowed the Nets to acquire a future second-round pick while also giving Brooklyn the financial flexibility to sign DeAndre Jordan.
Now Durant is eligible to sign a four-year, $197.7 million extension this offseason, which would represent the most money he could get from Brooklyn.
If Durant does not sign the extension and waits until the 2022 offseason, the same four-year $197.7 million contract would be waiting for him as an unrestricted free agent with the Nets. Durant turns 34 on Sept. 29, 2022, two days before the cutoff date of the over-38 rule, and is not eligible to sign a five-year, $255 million contract with Brooklyn.
Whether with an extension signed this season or a new four-year deal signed next summer, his $44.1 million starting salary in 2022-23 would replace his $43.9 million player option in 2022-23, resulting in $153 million in new money.
2022-23 | $44.1M
2023-24 | $47.6M
2024-25 | $51.2M
2025-26 | $54.7M
There is, however, an interesting wrinkle available to Durant, but it's one that would require him sacrificing long-term financial security for the chance of signing a more lucrative contract in 2023.
This scenario would entail Durant bypassing the exception this offseason, declining his player option next summer and signing a two-year deal worth $91.8 million that would include a player option for 2023-24. Durant would then be able to decline the option and sign a four-year, $207.5 million contract in the summer of 2023.
Here is what that would look like year by year.
2022-23 | $44.2M (first year of the two-year contract)
2023-24 | $46.3M (player option is declined and replaced with the first year of the new contract)
2024-25 | $50.0M
2025-26 | $53.7M
2026-27 | $57.4M
This would put Durant in line to earn $57.4 million when he is 38 years old. However, given his prior Achilles injury and the games he missed this past season, the safe bet would be for Durant to take the guaranteed money now and not wait until the 2023 offseason.
James Harden
Harden is in a unique situation because his extension would require him to opt in to his $47.4 million contract in 2022-23 and then extend for three additional seasons. Harden is not allowed to decline the $47.4 million player option in 2022-23, because the starting salary in the first year of the extension would be for less.
The total new money would come out to $161.1 million, and Harden would earn close to $50 million in the first season.
2023-24 | $49.7M
2024-25 | $53.7M
2025-26 | $57.7M
Because Harden is a year younger than Durant, he is not impacted by the over-38 rule, which means he'd be eligible to sign a five-year deal next summer if he decides to bypass an extension then decline his player option. In that case, Harden would be in line to sign a contract worth just shy of $270 million.
2022-23 | $46.5M
2023-24 | $50.2M
2024-25 | $54.0M
2025-26 | $57.7M
2026-27 | $61.4M
Harden's $61.4 million salary in the last year of that hypothetical contract would represent the largest one-year cap hit in league history.
Kyrie Irving
The Nets have to be careful with how they handle an extension for Irving. Given his injury history, a long-term deal for Irving could end up leaving Brooklyn stuck with the worst contract in the NBA a couple years from now. However, if the Nets balk at extending Irving, it could jeopardize their contract talks with Durant and Harden.
Considering that Brooklyn has gone "all in" with the Harden trade, not extending Irving would be counterproductive even with the risks involved as it relates to his health. Yes, committing an average of $45.4 million over the next four seasons to a player who has played a combined 74 games over the past two seasons -- and seen his season end prematurely due to injury three times in the past four years -- would be risky, but the Nets would still be over the salary cap if Irving walks in free agency, with no easy path to replacing a player who has averaged 25.2 points per game over the past five seasons.
Here is what an Irving extension would look like, starting with the 2022-23 season.
2022-23 | $40.5M
2023-24 | $43.8M
2024-25 | $47.0M
2025-26 | $50.3M
Because Irving would be declining his $35 million player option in 2022-23, the extension represents $146 million in new salary.
Like Harden, Irving is also eligible to sign a five-year max contract in 2022 if he does not sign an extension during the season and declines his player option for 2021-22. The total value of that contract is $235 million, and Irving would earn $53.5 million during the 2026-27 season.
Spencer Dinwiddie
The season just concluded, but Dinwiddie has already made a choice on his $12.3 million player option.
Sources told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski that Dinwiddie is declining the option for 2021-22, making him an unrestricted free agent.
While there is certainly a risk to doing so, especially coming off a partially torn ACL that cost him all but three games this past season, Dinwiddie at a minimum should recoup the $12.3 million he would be declining, even if the market dries up, and he's forced to sign a one-year deal to return to the Nets.
This is not a situation of a player declining a $28 million option, only to be staring at the $9.5 million midlevel exception.
Although he played in only three games, Dinwiddie hasn't suffered any setbacks in his rehab process and is one of the top point guards available in free agency this offseason. Before suffering the injury in late December, he was coming off a 2019-20 where he averaged a career high 20.6 points and 6.8 assists. According to ProFitX, he outplayed his $9.9 million contract in that season by $17 million.
Dinwiddie's options could be tied to the futures of Kyle Lowry and Dennis Schroder. If the two players sign with Miami and Chicago for example, Dinwiddie could be staring at the Knicks as the only team that has both cap space and a need at point guard.
Charlotte, Dallas, Oklahoma City and San Antonio are all projected to have the necessary cap space to sign Dinwiddie, but they all have starting point guards in place and would be more likely to use their cap space to fill other positional needs.
A sign-and-trade deal with a team that doesn't have significant cap space is an option, but that would require Brooklyn to take back salary in the trade, adding to an already high luxury tax bill. Brooklyn has a projected $53.4 million tax bill and would see that number double if the Nets took back $12 million in salary.
However, Brooklyn has limited means of adding to its roster in free agency, which means acquiring serviceable bench players or even draft assets should be an option the team considers. That could also mean re-signing Dinwiddie. If the Nets were to give him a contract starting with a $15 million salary for 2021-22, they would see their tax bill increase from $53 million to $120 million.
However, this past season teams like Brooklyn received a significant luxury tax break because of the pandemic-related decline in Basketball Related Income. The same principles could apply again in 2021-22, which would mean the Nets would once again save on their final luxury tax bill.
Brooklyn could also create savings if it can find a team who'll trade for DeAndre Jordan without sending back any salary. The center is owed $20 million over the final two years of his contract, and finding a taker for him after he fell out of the rotation and didn't play at all in the postseason would likely cost Brooklyn its first-round pick in 2021.
Other free agents
Because of the top-heavy nature of the Nets' roster, Brooklyn was forced to fill out the back end with low-salary players, nine of whom earned less than $2 million in 2020-21. Six of them -- including key playoff contributors Bruce Brown, Jeff Green and Blake Griffin -- are now set to become free agents.
Bringing those players back will likely be far more costly for the Nets this upcoming season. Let's take a look at Brooklyn's most important decisions in this group, starting with Brown.
Bruce Brown
Named captain of the Luke Walton All-Stars by our own Zach Lowe, Brown is the ultimate glue guy and had career highs this season in field goal percentage (55.6%), rebounds (5.4) and points in the paint (6.6). As Lowe wrote, Brown rebounded 9% of Brooklyn's misses while on the floor, one of the 10 highest single-season offensive rebounding rates ever among players listed 6-foot-4 or shorter, per Basketball-Reference.
That's incredible production for a player the Nets were able to acquire by trading Dzanan Musa (who was subsequently cut by the Detroit Pistons) and the Toronto Raptors' 2021 second-round pick. The deal wasn't a high-profile move when it was made last November, but has certainly turned out to be one of the best value transactions of the 2020 offseason.
Brown will now become a restricted free agent. As a result, the Nets are allowed to match on an offer sheet from an opposing team. Although Brooklyn enters the offseason $57.5 million over the cap, the Nets have Brown's Bird rights, meaning they can exceed the cap to re-sign him.
His salary projection for 2021-22 according to ProFitX is $10.9 million, slightly above the midlevel exception.
Blake Griffin
Griffin has non-Bird rights and Brooklyn is limited to offering him either the $5.9 million taxpayer midlevel exception, the $3.1 million non-Bird exception, or a veteran's minimum. While Griffin can't get a significant salary bump from Brooklyn, he is still set to collect $29.8 million from the Pistons in 2021-22 as part of his buyout agreement.
Jeff Green
Green has been given the unforgivable tag of Mr. Minimum the past five seasons. Since signing a four-year, $36.2 million contract with Boston in 2012, Green has become the ultimate journeyman, signing a series of one-year contracts. The first of those one-year deals was for $15 million with the Orlando Magic in 2016. Since then he's signed for the veteran's minimum with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Washington Wizards, Utah Jazz, Houston Rockets and Brooklyn Nets.
The merry-go-round of minimum contracts could end this offseason. Green is coming off a season in which he started 38 games, averaged 11 points per game and shot a career-high 41.2% from 3-point range.
Because of the series of one-year deals, Green hasn't accrued Bird rights, and the Nets are limited to offering him a non-Bird raise to $3.1 million or using their $5.9 million taxpayer exception to retain Green. If they were to give Green a deal for the full value of that exception, it would come with an additional $30 million tax hit.
Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot and Tyler Johnson
Both players have early Bird rights, which allows Brooklyn to re-sign them on a deal that is at least two years long at a salary up to the average for an NBA player (approximately $10 million). Brooklyn could also retain either player on a one-year contract, but can only offer a starting salary of 120% off their minimum exception for 2021-22.
Luwawu-Cabarrot was a part of Brooklyn's regular rotation during the regular season, averaging 18 minutes a night and even starting seven games, but played a total of 25 minutes during the playoffs. Jonson was slightly more involved in the postseason, averaging 8.6 minutes per game, but scored just 2.1 points on 35% shooting.
James was a late-season addition for the Nets, signing the first of two 10-day contracts in April before inking a rest-of-season deal on May 13. Brooklyn can only offer him a non-Bird raise, unless the Nets decide to retain him using all or part of their taxpayer midlevel exception. James did reach double figures in scoring in Games 1 and 2 of the series against the Bucks, but slowly fell out of the rotation as the series progressed.
Offseason cap breakdown
Team needs
Bench depth: PG, SF, PF and C
Resources to build the roster
The drawing card of playing with Durant, Harden and Irving
The draft: first and three seconds (Atlanta, Indiana and Phoenix)
Own free agents
$5.9 million taxpayer midlevel
Cash: $5.8M to send out or receive in a trade
Dates to watch
• The Nets have until August 1 to tender Brown a one-year $4.7 million qualifying offer, which will make him a restricted free agent. Brown was originally slated to receive a $2.1 million offer but reached starter criteria when he averaged more than 34.5 starts in the past two seasons.
• Forward Alize Johnson has a September 4 guaranteed date where $100K of his $1.8 million contract becomes guaranteed.
Restrictions
• Brooklyn is restricted from trading any future first-round picks. The Nets can trade their 2021 first-round pick once it has been made.
• Durant and Irving have 15% trade bonuses that get voided because they exceed the maximum salary allowed.
• Johnson's contract is non-guaranteed and does not count for salary outgoing in a trade.
Extension eligible
• Former second-round pick Nic Claxton is entering the final year of his contract and is extension eligible. In the 29 games in the rotation, Claxton averaged 19.3 minutes, 7.1 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.3 blocks. His salary projection in the first year of an extension is $8.5 million according to ProFitX. Claxton can be extended for an additional four years and up to $55 million. He is a restricted free agent next offseason, and there is no deadline as to when Brooklyn has to extend him by.
• On his third team in as many years, Landry Shamet has been one of the Nets top reserves this season. In the 48 games as part of the rotation, Shamet averaged 9.0 points off the bench and shot 40.6% from three. His starting salary in an extension according to ProFitX is $11 million. The Nets have until October 18 to extend him, and the maximum years that Brooklyn can add is four.
• DeAndre Jordan is extension eligible, but it is highly unlikely he will receive a new contract.
The draft
Despite depleting their future draft capital in the Harden trade, Brooklyn still has their own first-round pick and three additional second-round picks this year. They owe the Rockets unprotected first-round picks in 2022, 2024 and 2026. Houston also has the right to swap firsts in 2023, 2025 and 2027.
Here's how ESPN's Jonathan Givony and Mike Schmitz have Brooklyn selecting in July:
No. 27 (own): Marcus Bagley | SF/PF | Arizona State
No. 44 (via IND): Ariel Hukporti | C | Nevezis
No. 49 (via ATL): Johnny Juzang | SF | UCLA
No. 59 (via PHX): Daishen Nix | PG/SG | G League Ignite
Brooklyn has been part of two draft night trades in the past two seasons. Last year, as part of a three-team trade with Detroit and the LA Clippers, the Nets acquired Brown and Shamet.