Impact beyond D-Lo
I expect Rondae Hollis-Jefferson to be renounced as the Brooklyn Nets need the additional cap flexibility. RHJ has not developed as fast as Brooklyn hoped he would.
The market for RHJ appears to be lukewarm and that’s being generous.
The acquisition of Taurean Prince was a wise one. Prince, like Caris LeVert, is friends with Kevin Durant off-the-court and has worked out with him in previous offseasons. Perhaps Marks targeted Prince in his bid to woo Durant to Brooklyn next season.
Regardless, Prince can contribute on the court as a 3-and-D player while also being injury insurance for LeVert. He also provides much needed depth for the Nets.
Prince was the 12th overall pick in the 2016 draft and has improved his 3-point shooting and overall field goal percentage each year in the NBA.
Arguably, he is a better player than the Nets could have gotten with the 17th pick in this year’s draft. Time will tell as it always does with draft results.
Prince shot the 3 ball at a 39 percent clip last season, which is a perfect fit for Atkinson’s green-light-beyond-the-arc offensive strategy. His field goal percentage rose to 44 percent last season and could increase playing on a better team like Brooklyn.
The only negatives of the Prince acquisition is that he will be a restricted free agent after next season and he’s not a great rebounder, grabbing less than four per game in his short career.
Ultimately, Prince could also just be another piece Marks uses in a future trade as well.
The other obvious negative is it took trading away a 2020 lottery-protected first-round draft pick to make it happen. Since the Nets figure to be a playoff team next year that pick will most likely end up conveying next year to Atlanta.
Lastly, the other downside of trading this year’s 17th overall pick and next year’s first-round pick is that Brooklyn can’t use them in any future trades.
This makes the potential trade for Anthony Davis highly unlikely as other teams can offer better draft packages and players to New Orleans.
Brooklyn was not on Davis’ preferred list destinations and it was unlikely that Marks would trade the entire Nets future to experiment with him anyway.