Thirty days after coming to terms on a two-year, $19MM contract, the Nets finally completed their deal with free agent big man Moritz Wagner on Friday. As Yossi Gozlan of The Third Apron tweets, Wagner was willing to wait several weeks to put pen to paper in order to give Brooklyn the opportunity to seek a viable use for roughly $14MM in leftover cap room.
If the Nets had found a trade or free agent signing worth putting that $14MM in room toward, they could’ve subsequently signed Wagner using their room exception. But with nothing having materialized, Brooklyn moved forward and finalized Wagner’s deal using cap room, leaving the team with just $4.5MMish remaining, plus that $9.4MM room exception.
While the Nets, who now have a full 15-man standard roster, may decide to carry that $4.5MM in cap room into the regular season, Gozlan notes (via Twitter) that it could also be put toward renegotiating Michael Porter Jr.‘s 2026/27 salary as part of an extension agreement.
A renegotiation can only be used to increase a player’s current-year salary and is only available to teams operating under the cap. Giving a player a raise in the short term could make him more inclined to accept more team-friendly terms on an extension, though a $4.5MM raise on Porter’s current $40.8MM salary would be relatively modest and likely wouldn’t incentivize him to accept too steep a discount.
We have more notes from around the Atlantic:
