Suns, Nets’ Updated Depth Charts, Draft Picks and Salary Cap After Kevin Durant Trade
Suns #Suns
It finally happened.
While many NBA fans were asleep, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported the Brooklyn Nets agreed to trade Kevin Durant along with T.J. Warren to the Phoenix Suns. In return, the Suns will get Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson, Jae Crowder and four first-round picks.
Although the Suns lost a valuable two-way wing in Bridges and a young stretch 4 with Johnson, they managed to keep Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton.
Here’s how Phoenix’s depth chart could shake out:
The Nets, meanwhile, are a significantly different team from the one that opened the season following the departures of Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Crowder could fit in at either forward position for Brooklyn, but Wojnarowski reported the team “believes it has a chance to move Crowder on to a contender” ahead of the deadline. The 32-year-old may not be long for the Nets.
With the deal, the franchise recouped a lot of the draft capital it lost from the James Harden trade:
Durant still has three more years to run on his four-year, $194.2 million extension he signed with the Nets. That will limit Phoenix’s financial flexibility moving forward, with the team projected to be $18 million over the salary cap in 2023-24, per Spotrac. The Suns get a little more wiggle room ($7.7 million under the cap) in 2024-25.
Like Durant, Bridges is in the first year of a four-year deal, his paying a total of $90 million. Dinwiddie counts for $19.5 million against the cap this year and $20 million next season. Then you have Ben Simmons’ contract, which might be the worst in the NBA at this point. He’s still owed $78.2 million over the next two years.
Because of that, the Durant trade on its own doesn’t totally clean up Brooklyn’s books right away. The team is projected to be $5.3 million over the cap in 2023-24, per Spotrac. Come 2024-25, however, the team can create up to $64.4 million in cap space.
The Nets’ superteam era is over with them having achieved almost none of their major objectives. Through the Irving and Durant trades, they at least set the stage for a rebuild while simultaneously acquiring the kind of assets that can help them land another star down the road.