Nets ranked as top-5 team in NBA in terms of best trade assets

In his article for Bleacher Report, Grant Hughes ranked the top-five teams in the league in terms of the best trade assets to offer and the Nets landed at the third spot on the list, ahead of the Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs and behind the Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Considering the fact that Brooklyn is expected to have the most cap-space in the league by far along with their draft capital, the ranking makes sense.

“If you view cap flexibility as a trade asset, the Nets have a case to rank even higher than this,” Hughes wrote. “But it feels like a bit of a stretch to view their glut of offseason spending power (between $40 and $80 million, depending on what they do with their free agents) as an actual trade chip.”

To Hughes’ point, Brooklyn having plenty of cap space may not mean much in terms of how they’ll operate in free-agency given that most NBA pundits are anticipating the Nets to use their salary cap for moves other than outright signing the best players available in free-agency. Since Brooklyn is in a position to outbid every team for any player on the free-agent market, they may be able to maximize their cap space by also getting desirable assets from teams looking to shed payroll, like the Boston Celtics, for example.

While the Nets are going to be looking around the free-agent market to find the best players for what they want to do moving forward under the Jordi Fernandez/Sean Marks regime, the organization is not going to make a splash if the outcome isn’t contending for a playoff spot at the very least. With that as the backdrop, the extra cap space and draft picks are more likely means to getting more assets as opposed to getting the best players.