The Brooklyn Nets entered free agency with more spending power than almost anyone, and spent the opening days refusing to prove it. Brooklyn signed Keon Ellis to a two-year, $18 million deal, per NetsDaily, and agreed with Moritz Wagner on two years and $19 million, per NBA.com. Neither move trends. Both are the kind of margin-buying that good rebuilds are made of.
Ellis, 26, is a 3-and-D guard who earned his money the hard way in Sacramento and Cleveland; Wagner is one of the league’s more reliable bench-energy bigs. Brooklyn also kept its own: Day’Ron Sharpe agreed to return, per NBA.com, and Josh Minott is back on a two-year, $9 million deal with a team option. The front office declined its $6.25 million option on Ziaire Williams, per NetsDaily.
All of this follows the real headline of Brooklyn’s summer: the draft-week deal that landed Julius Randle and the No. 28 pick from the Minnesota Timberwolves, with Nic Claxton heading to the Chicago Bulls in the three-team structure, per Shams Charania of ESPN. A three-time All-Star arrived, a franchise fixture left, and somehow the books barely noticed.
That is the part worth dwelling on. Even after absorbing Randle, NetsDaily reports Brooklyn can still open roughly $37 million in cap room — and the pick stockpile that has defined this rebuild remains untouched. The ledger, as of this week: real spending flexibility, a legitimate 20-a-night scorer on the roster, two-year commitments everywhere, and not a single future first surrendered. Every contract signed so far expires or team-options out by 2028.
You can call it timid. You can also call it the only coherent strategy for a team this far from contention: buy respectable players on short money, keep the powder dry, and wait for a star to shake loose from someone else’s mistake. This week’s Atlantic Division chaos suggests they never have to wait long.
