Brooklyn Nets: Impact of Allen Crabbe trade on team’s future

How does the reported trade of Allen Crabbe affect the future of the Brooklyn Nets in terms of free agency plans and the immediate future?

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Brooklyn Nets have agreed in principle to trade Allen Crabbe to the Atlanta Hawks. What will be the impact of the Crabbe trade for Brooklyn’s future.

Here are the details of the deal.

Brooklyn is trading Allen Crabbe and No. 17 pick in 2019 NBA Draft and protected first in 2020 to Atlanta for Taurean Prince and 2021 second-round pick, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 6, 2019

The deal cannot be finalized until July 6, but that’s just a formality at this point.

The financial implications

By moving Allen Crabbe’s contract, his $18.5 million annual salary for the 2019-20 season is off the Brooklyn Nets salary cap sheet for 2019-20.

By taking back Taurean Prince‘s guaranteed contract for $3,481,985 in the 2019-20 season, this gives the Nets an additional $15 million in cap space for next season.

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When this deal is finalized, the Nets will have a guaranteed team payroll for next season totaling roughly $32.44 million. The NBA salary cap for the 2019 season will be around $109 million per team.

This would give Brooklyn roughly $70 million to spend if they choose to exhaust the entire team salary cap for 2019. The team also has to account for the dead money from the last season of stretch penalties from waiving Deron Williams in 2015, roughly $5.5 million

Most importantly, this trade gives the Nets much needed cap flexibility to sign two players to maximum contracts in the upcoming NBA free agency period which starts officially on June 30.

The Crabbe trade is a strong indicator that Nets general manager Sean Marks intends to sign two players to maximum-contracts this offseason.