How much will the Brooklyn Nets save by trading DeAndre Jordan rather than buying the veteran center out of the remaining two years and $20 million left on his contract ahead of the Sept. 11 deadline to waive players and stretch their salaries over multiple seasons?
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported Friday that the Nets will instead send Jordan to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for two lower-salary reserves, Sekou Doumbouya and Jahlil Okafor. As incentive for taking on Jordan's salary and looking to negotiate a buyout of their own, the Pistons will get four second-round picks -- two of them from Brooklyn and two previously acquired from other teams.
Let's take a look at what this means for a potentially historic Nets luxury-tax bill this season as well as what Detroit is foregoing by adding multiple years of Jordan's salary to add draft picks to the coffers.
Nets get: Sekou Doumbouya, Jahlil Okafor
Pistons get: DeAndre Jordan, 2022 Brooklyn second-round pick, 2024 Washington second-round pick, 2025 Golden State second-round pick, 2027 Brooklyn second-round pick
Brooklyn Nets: A
Assuming the Nets replaced Jordan on their roster with LaMarcus Aldridge (who Wojnarowski subsequently reported has agreed to sign with the team), they would have been looking at opening the 2021-22 season an incredible $41 million into the luxury tax, translating into a payment of $143 million in tax alone. Per Spotrac data, that would have shattered the previous record tax bill of $91 million held by Brooklyn in 2012-13.
The Nets could have shaved that bill down to $108 million by waiving Jordan and stretching his remaining salary over five years, meaning a cap hit a little less than $4 million. But that would have been costly in future seasons, as Brooklyn is sure to continue paying the tax and will be a repeater starting in 2023-24, meaning each additional dollar of salary above the tax line costs an extra 50 cents compared to the current charge.
Because we don't know where the tax line will fall or the Nets' other salaries, it's impossible to put an exact figure on the cost of stretching Jordan's salary, but it's reasonable to estimate somewhere around $60 million in extra tax from 2023-24 onward.
Instead, Brooklyn replaces Jordan's $9.9 million salary with Doumbouya and Okafor, who make a combined $5.7 million this season and have no guaranteed money beyond it. (Barring a stunning performance by Doumbouya in training camp, the Nets will surely decline his $5.5 million team option for 2022-23.) That cuts their tax bill to $117 million this year with the potential to save more money if they can use some of their remaining second-round picks to move Doumbouya or Okafor elsewhere.
The savings are even bigger in 2022-23, when Brooklyn is entirely free of the salary obligation to Jordan and figures to cut about $40 million off the tax bill. As Wojnarowski explained, that will make it easier for the Nets to use either their 2022 taxpayer midlevel exception or one of their trade exceptions to add to the roster at some point in the next year.
Fortunately, Brooklyn had amassed several additional second-round picks in a variety of trades to use in this one. The Nets still have their own second-rounders in 2024, 2026 and 2028 as well as the lesser of their pick and Atlanta's in 2023. To pull this kind of savings off without giving up a first-rounder has to feel like a win for Brooklyn even if it means the Nets can't use cash in a trade the rest of this league year.
Detroit Pistons: C+
In terms of this season's payroll, adding $4 million in salary won't affect the Pistons, who will come out ahead financially in the short term thanks to receiving the maximum amount of cash possible in a trade ($5.8 million). Detroit's alternative cost is burning nearly $10 million in cap space next summer.
Making a trade than to take salary into space probably would have netted the Pistons a relatively similar return. Detroit probably won't be a player in free agency next summer anyway and has avenues to create additional cap space using team options on two-year deals signed this offseason by guards Hamidou Diallo and Frank Jackson.
The most interesting aspect of this trade from the Pistons' angle is treating Doumbouya, the No. 15 pick of the 2019 draft, as salary ballast. Doumbouya burst on the scene in January 2020, when he averaged 14.0 points per game and shot 41% from 3-point range in his first eight starts as a teenager in place of the injured Blake Griffin. Alas, that kind of shooting wasn't sustainable for Doumbouya, who has shot 25% from 3 in two NBA seasons.
After a regime change in Detroit, Doumbouya played fewer minutes in Year 2, and he was ineffective offensively in the two games he played for the Pistons' summer league team in Las Vegas last month. Not yet 21, it looks like Doumbouya will be searching for a new start elsewhere.