According to the latest Brooklyn Nets rumors, the cash considerations sent to the Charlotte Hornets in the Dwight Howard trade totaled $5 million.
New Brooklyn Nets rumors have more of the details of the trade which brought Dwight Howard — however briefly — to the Nets continuing to emerge.
According to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders, the Nets sent $5 million to the Charlotte Hornets in the cash considerations part of the trade.
In the deal, first agreed to on June 20 and finalized Friday, the Nets sent Timofey Mozgov, the rights to 45th overall pick Hamidou Diallo, a 2019 second-round pick and cash considerations to Charlotte in exchange for Howard.
Under NBA rules, teams can only receive $5.243 million in trades during the 2018-19 league year, according to Luke Adams at Hoops Rumors.
Nothin’ But Nets clarified with Jeff Siegel of Early Bird Rights that the $5.243 million figure also applies to cash sent out in trades and that the figures are independent of each other.
That means Brooklyn sending out $5 million does not increase the cap on what they could take back in any future trades during this league year.
Charlotte reportedly hit the cash cap when they traded Diallo’s rights to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday.
None of the cash considerations moved in trades counts either for or against the salary cap, so from that standpoint there is no impact.
With the cash considerations in the Howard trade clarified, that should put all of the details of the deal in place.
Howard’s buyout was finalized Saturday and, per Brian Lewis of the New York Post, the earlier reports that it was Howard who requested the buyout may not be entirely accurate.
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According to the Post, Howard publicly stated he asked for the buyout because he wanted to play for a contender, but it appears that was a strategy designed to reduce the sting of learning the Nets had no intention of keeping him.
Lewis’ report indicated that head coach Kenny Atkinson had some concerns about the effect Howard — who has a history of being a less-than-popular figure in his own locker room — would have on the chemistry of the club.
The buyout gives the Nets somewhere in the range of $10.6 million to $11.6 million under the salary cap, enough room to bring in another free agent or take on a salary dump with future draft pick assets attached to it.
The only new addition in Brooklyn so far this summer is big man Ed Davis, who signed for the one-year, $4.49 million bi-annual exception. The Nets also re-signed unrestricted free agent wing Joe Harris to a two-year, $16 million deal using their early Bird rights.
As of Saturday, the plan appeared to be for the Nets to wait to sign Harris and Davis until the cap space is used up, according to Keith Smith of RealGM:
Blue Man Hoop
The sequence of events is important, because if a team has cap space available those exceptions don’t come into play. Once the cap is reached, then the Nets can re-sign Harris and sign Davis officially in order to take advantage of the exemptions under the salary cap.
The Nets currently have two non-guaranteed deals on the cap sheet for 2018-19, $1.7 million for Spencer Dinwiddie and $1.5 million for Isaiah Whitehead.
The deadline for Whitehead’s deal to be guaranteed was moved from July 1 to July 31. He is not playing in the Summer League as he continues to recover from surgery on his right wrist, which was injured in early April.
Dinwiddie’s deal becomes guaranteed for $250,000 if he remains on the roster on Oct. 31 and is fully guaranteed on Jan. 10.
The current cap figure includes a roster hold of $838,464 for second-round draft pick Rodions Kurucs, whose contract is expected to be more than that once his buyout from FC Barcelona in Spain is finalized.
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The sides reportedly have already agreed to a four-year deal, per European basketball writer David Pick.