The Brooklyn Nets want to unload Brook Lopez before the trade deadline.
Considering the Nets have won all of nine games this season and don’t have much in the way of draft assets, trading away the team’s top piece makes plenty of sense.
Keith Smith of RealGM detailed some of the happenings around a potential move:
While BRK has no incentive to tank, they view traded picks as a sunk cost and want to recoup value from current roster as much as possible.
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) January 30, 2017
This is an interesting development and meshes will with the rumblings suggesting the team wants first-round picks in exchange for Lopez.
It is hard to say if a team will drop a first-round pick in exchange for Lopez. He is 28 years old and averaging 20.7 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game. But those rebound numbers aren’t what a team trading for a 7’0″ center want to see.
To his credit, Lopez makes up for what he lacks as a defender and on the glass by adapting to the new-look league via shooting—he now averages a career high 35.9 percent from deep.
On paper, a deal for Lopez might be a panic move by a contender that loses a starter to injury. Otherwise it seems hard to imagine teams will be willing to cough up the price Brooklyn wants, especially when everyone knows the Nets want to move him.
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