Brooklyn Nets rumors: D’Angelo Russell qualifying offer keeps options open

According to a report, the Brooklyn Nets have extended the $9.16 million qualifying offer to D’Angelo
Russell to keep him a restricted free agent.

The Brooklyn Nets have opted to extend a one-year, $9.16 million qualifying offer to point guard D’Angelo Russell, which will make Russell a restricted free agent as NBA teams are able to begin meeting with free agents and their representatives Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern.

Extending the qualifying offer allows the Nets to retain the right to match any offer sheet Russell might agree to before the league’s annual moratorium expires on July 6. Brooklyn would have 48 hours the time the offer sheet is signed, no earlier than July 6, to opt to match or let Russell go.

Shams Charania of The Athletic reported the Russell maneuver.

The price of keeping Russell restricted is, however, the $21.06 million cap hold necessary to retain his rights.

That doesn’t prevent Brooklyn from agreeing to sign their reported dream scenario of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, per Brian Lewis of the New York Post, but it would require the Nets to both withdraw the qualifying offer and renounce Russell’s free-agent exception rights before they could close any deals with Irving and Durant.

There is other salary cap gymnastics required to free enough cap space to get Irving and Durant, as well, as the first-year salary ticket for both would be $70.8 million and Brooklyn currently has the ability to get to a maximum of $68.67 million without trading one or more of the seven players currently with guaranteed 2019-20 contracts.

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Those seven players include Spencer Dinwiddie (2019-20 salary, $10.61 million), Joe Harris ($7.67 million), Taurean Prince ($3.48 million), Caris LeVert ($2.63 million), Jarrett Allen ($2.38 million), Dzanan Musa ($191 million) and Rodions Kurucs ($1.7 million).

One team with a significant amount of interest in Russell is the Minnesota Timberwolves, but ESPN‘s Zach Lowe reported Friday that the Nets have very little interest in taking back veteran point guard Jeff Teague in a sign-and-trade scenario.

On bit more of a surprising note, the Nets also reportedly extended a qualifying offer of $1.73 million to their other remaining restricted free agent, guard Theo Pinson, who spent most of 2018-19 on a two-way contract before getting a regular deal on the final day of Brooklyn’s regular season.

Pinson, an undrafted free agent out of North Carolina in 2018, will have a cap hold of $1.64 million as a restricted free agent.

Michael Scotto of The Athletic reported the QO decision on Pinson.

The Nets already declined to extend a qualifying offer to four-year veteran Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, letting the forward head into unrestricted free agency.

As everything presently stands, the Nets are projected to enter the new league year $16.05 million over the projected $109 million salary cap.

However, that total includes cap holds for unrestricted free agents DeMarre Carroll ($23.1 million), Jared Dudley ($14.3 million), Hollis-Jefferson ($7.41 million) and Ed Davis ($5.34 million).

Instead, it is anticipated the Nets will renounce at least some of those cap holds (and this surrendering Bird rights to Carroll, Dudley and Hollis-Jefferson) and will be signing free agents into cap space in the new league year.

That, in turn, would leave only Room Exception open to the Nets to exceed the cap, an exception that is $4.76 million and may be used for one player or split among multiple players (but not in conjunction with any other money; i.e., you couldn’t use $2 million of the Room Exception and $4 million in cap space to sign a player to a $6 million deal).

Despite comments from former Oklahoma City teammates Kendrick Perkins and Enes Kanter that Durant is likely headed to Brooklyn, Ian Begley of Sports Net New York reported Friday, citing sources, that none of the four teams with the most interest in Durant — Brooklyn, along with the New York Knicks, LA Clippers and Golden State Warriors — have been given any indication what Durant’s intentions are.

Irving is still widely expected to send up with the Nets, but the Los Angeles Lakers may make a push after having opened up a max salary slot by adding the trades of Moritz Wagner, Jemerrio Jones and Isaac Bonga to the Washington Wizards to their agreed-upon trade to acquire Anthony Davis from the New Orleans Pelicans, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

The Lakers are also reportedly interested in a potential reunion with Russell and will at least get a meeting, of sorts, with Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard of the Toronto Raptors.

Through the miracle of technology (or the NBA’s worst-kept secret … the fact teams, players and agents have already been talking), there is likely to be a flurry of deals being reported shortly after the negotiating period begins Sunday evening.

Whether a deal for Irving with Brooklyn or another club is part of that initial flurry will go a long way toward determining where the rest of the dominoes end up falling for the Nets this summer.