NBA Trade Deadline 2016: 5 deals the Brooklyn Nets should make
By John Buhler
The Brooklyn Nets have to make some trades to drastically overhaul their roster. Here are five trades that could maybe help the Nets in the long term.
After going all in on putting together a team that could win an NBA Championship from 2012 to 2014, the Brooklyn Nets have gone from the No. 8 seed in the 2015 Eastern Conference Playoffs to one of the four worst teams in the NBA in 2015-16, without having the luxury of controlling their presumed lottery pick.
Eccentric owner Mikhail Prokhorov forced former general manager Billy King to make some questionable trades the last few years that would benefit the Nets in the short-term but cripple the club in the long-term. Needless to say the trades to get Joe Johnson, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce did not result in an NBA Championship for the Nets, as sacrificing first-round picks and rights to pick swaps have short-armed what the Nets can do in the next to immediate future.
In essence, the Nets are in win-now mode with one of the four worst rosters in the NBA with absolutely no incentive to lose. The worse the Nets play in 2015-16, the better the Boston Celtics’ odds are of winning the NBA Draft Lottery due to a rights to a pick swap in the Garnett/Pierce deal two years ago.
Brooklyn doesn’t have a general manager at this time, but needs to desperately shake things up with its current roster in an effort to get younger, more financially flexible, and be able to field a competitive roster without the luxury of being able to rely on the NBA Draft for presumably the next five years.
With the 2016 NBA Trade Deadline rapidly approaching on 3:00 PM ET Thursday, here are five trades that the Nets could make to potentially help the organization out in the long-term, the team’s goal in what has been a lost and forgettable 2015-16 NBA season.
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