A Mad Men guide to the 2018-19 NBA Season

“That’s not a strategy, that’s two strategies connected by the word ‘and.’ ” — Brooklyn Nets

The hipster blogger not-so-under-the-radar storyline of the summer has been how the Brooklyn Nets are a year away from making some real noise, to the tune of two max salary slots. That’s what happens when you find a taker for one of the worst contracts in basketball because the woebegone Hornets are trying to duck the luxury tax (sell, Michael, please…for the good of the sport you once owned, sell…)

Here’s the issue: this storyline doesn’t jive with the organizational ethos they’ve been building up over the last two years, which is that Brooklyn is the pinnacle of internal basketball development.

Where next summer is concerned, the Nets can certainly get to one max cap slot, but making room for two would be nearly impossible without relinquishing cap holds for D’Angelo Russell and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. The latter is someone the franchise has been slowly building up over the last three years, and seems on the cusp of becoming a valuable two-way wing, while the former is the ultimate reclamation project — a player the Nets banked on replacing at least some of that lottery talent they were bereft of these last several years.

Would Brooklyn pull the plug on both players to gain maximum flexibility under the cap? The good news is that they don’t have to decide any time soon, having the luxury of waiting until the summer to see if there are multiple big names who want to come before they relinquish any holds.

It’s a game of roulette they’ll be happy to engage in, and better times certainly seem to be on the way. Still, let’s hold off on the congrats for now.