As the Nets look to deal their big names away, Sacramento has emerged as a possible landing spot for Deron Williams.
Somewhere, possibly in Brooklyn or Russia, there might be the solitary soul (gold-plated of course), of a single billionaire who thought the Brooklyn Nets mortgaging of the future would render the team a ‘contender.’
I have a hard time trying to recall a time when anyone thought that the Nets were a true threat to anyone. Marking up every available inch in salary they could for players who were past-prime figureheads. A roster scrabbled together under the guise of contender, but really just a time bomb of bloated contracts that would never threaten the Big Three in Miami, hold a candle to the Chicago If Rose Is Healthy Bulls, or even compete with the borderline dark horse of upstart Indiana. Trading away draft picks and taking on massive salaries was never going to overcome their Eastern Conference competition.
In light of this self-evident truth, the Nets recently let rumblings circulate the league that they were looking to deal their big pieces. The Nets had finally signaled that they were willing to move Joe Johnson, Brook Lopez, and Deron Williams. In a few years a book or two, and maybe even an ESPN 30 for 30 will try to make sense of everything that happened and all the damage done to the new-in-town Nets. I can see it now, “What if I told you that Russian billionaires don’t understand salary caps? What if I said that being the best NBA team in New York City wasn’t anything to brag about?”
Maybe the 30 for 30 is a stretch, but it brings a smile to my face, which is an achievement for a team as uninspiring as the current Brooklyn Nets. It seems that they have finally decided to attempt some patchwork on the holes in their Hudson River-bound pontoon.
While moving pieces like Johnson and Lopez is a potential reality, the only real talk so far has centered on Williams. In a cosmic effort to make sure that all things NBA align in the most entertaining ways possible, the Nets may have found a trade partner in the one and only Sacramento Ranadives Kings. Hot on the heels of jettisoning head coach Mike Malone, who was winning when Demarcus Cousins was in the lineup, and talking of implementing schemes that were successful in grade school teams, the Kings are looking for a little ‘jazz’ in their flow and figured that allowing Tyron Corbin to coach would be the man to start the revolution at head coach. Continuing the ‘jazz’ revolution now means they have had trade talks to bring in Deron Williams. Someone please clarify that Ranadive said he wanted jazz, not Jazz.
This deal could eventually get done, but as of now the two teams seem to be going nowhere fast. Currently, they are at an impasse over… Mason Plumlee. The Kings have shown interest in Williams and his massive, dead-and-bloated contract which carries two years beyond the current season and over $43 million. In order to take on D-Will, they are supposedly also chasing after Mason Plumlee. Plumlee stepped in to the starting role while Brooks Lopez, another player the Nets are trying to cut loose, was out with injury. Plumlee was averaging better than 17 points and 10 rebounds over the last few weeks which makes him attractive in trades but also is the type of producer and contract that the Nets really should keep if they want to turn things around sometime before 2024.
The Kings, for their part, aren’t offering the world in players. Reports from multiple sources, primarily Adrian Wojnorwoski at Yahoo! Sports, indicated that Darren Collison, Jason Thompson and Derrick Williams were pieces that could be headed to Brooklyn if a deal came to fruition. Collison, the main piece that would be sent in return for Deron Williams, is averaging 16.3 points and 6.0 assists on the season. It feels like some type of Jedi mind trick that the Jazz would be looking to trade Collison for Williams.
The more that I look at the potential deal between the Nets and Jazz, I can’t help but feel that either the Kings are terrible at basketball decisions or they are trying to trick the Nets into voluntarily handing them Mason Plumlee under the guise of taking the Deron Williams contract. Williams has played progressively worse as the season goes on, December found him shooting 32 percent and averaging 11.4 points and 6.8 assists for the month. In addition to being owed over $17 million more than Collison in 2016-17, Williams appears to be on the downward slope of his career.
The other possibility to consider is this: are the Kings doing all this for the benefit of Rudy Gay? Gay has struggled to find a steady home after falling on hard times in Memphis and Toronto. The Kings decided to keep the shooter in town and that makes me think that they want to take the heat off of Gay by bringing in a player who is paid even more than Gay and is potentially much more detrimental both in performance and cap hit.
There is some real possibility that Deron Williams could work out in Sacramento. Gay was basically being taken out to pasture when he found a home in Sacramento. Demarcus Cousins is playing absolutely lights out this year and owns every matchup he faces. It’s possible that the Kings value the assist numbers that Williams can offer and see him as a great fit to feed Cousins for some easy high-percentage looks with a no-conscience shooter in Gay just waiting for the kick out. I can see how someone would believe that gives them a strong chance to win a few games.
But do they win more games than they would if they had Collison? I have to assume that the Kings really believe that the gamble on Williams would make them better in the now. The Nets would clearly look to pull this trade for two huge reasons. The first, Williams has one of the ugliest contracts in the game. Williams is oft-injured, physically diminished and his numbers in December raises concerns about his skills eroding. Nothing about my description of Williams should make any team want to pay him $22 million two years from now, but someone will. The Nets have to be hoping that it isn’t them. Second, the return pieces in the trade are attractive options. Collison is the main piece and he is young enough and cheap enough that he is a bargain with numbers that are much stronger than Williams at this point.
The Kings would be brave to take a chance on Williams, but the reach isn’t that far if you are pairing him with Rudy Gay and Demarcus Cousins. Those players are good enough that they may be able to help Williams elevate his game to some semblance of his former self. The Nets would do well to ditch his awful contract while making themselves immediately more competitive in a very weak Eastern Conference and division that just lost another high-profile guard in Boston. It might just be crazy enough to work for both teams, depending on how you define “work.”
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