Brooklyn Nets: 5 biggest offseason questions

1. Does DLo stay or does he go?

D’Angelo Russell had his breakout season for the Brooklyn Nets in 2018-19. He became an All-Star for the first time and piloted the Nets through a plethora of injuries to a winning season and a playoff berth.

The Nets chose not to offer Russell an extension last offseason, with Russell set to become a restricted free agent on July 1 (assuming Brooklyn extends him a Qualifying Offer by June 29).

Russell would like to stay. That much is clear.

Russell’s situation is sticky.

In order to use Russell’s Bird rights to be able to retain him as a free agent without regard to the 2019-20 salary cap hit, the Nets would have to extend the Qualifying Offer and retain his cap hold of $21.1 million.

Brooklyn could then make a deal with Russell and wait to formalize it until after the rest of the cap space is exhausted, similar to what they did with Joe Harris (early Bird rights) and Ed Davis (biannual exception) last summer.

This is where it starts to get complicated.

By keeping Russell’s Bird rights, the cap hold limits their flexibility. If the Nets opt to renounce their free-agent exception rights to their other free agents and keep Russell, they would free up roughly $51.9 million under the cap, which would get them to about $27.1 million available.

That’s less than a max slot. However, Brooklyn could get another roughly $3.5 million by waiving Shabazz Napier and Treveon Graham before the July 10 deadline for their contracts for 2019-20 to become guaranteed.

Now we’re to $30.6 million, still shy of a max slot.

That’s where the Allen Crabbe deal comes into play. If they can move Crabbe, they can open up another $18.5 million — well over the threshold necessary for a max deal, even when accounting what potential money being added to the books with whatever comes back in return.

In that scenario, the Nets could have their cake (a big-ticket free agent) and eat it, too (retaining Russell).

That doesn’t account for a potential Caris LeVert rookie scale extension, but that’s a question to ponder on its own.