The Nets finally cashed in their most valuable trade chip, dealing Cam Johnson to Denver for Michael Porter Jr. and a first-round pick.
Brooklyn will get the 6-foot-10, 218-pound forward and Denver’s 2032 first-rounder in a deal first reported by ESPN and confirmed by The Post.
It was the epitome of how Nets general manager Sean Marks has weaponized his precious salary cap space, having picked up a first-rounder just the day before last week’s draft and now grabbing a future first-rounder for a similar price.
The 29-year-old Johnson — who arrived in Brooklyn as part of the haul received for Kevin Durant — is coming off a breakout campaign in which he averaged a career-high 18.8 points on .475/.390/.893 shooting splits. He was unquestionably the Nets’ best shooter and his versatile defense on the wing helped them. Perhaps too much.
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The Nets went well into last season before trading point guard Dennis Schroder and power forward Dorian Finney-Smith, with a better-than-expected 8-9 start undermining their tanking efforts. They went into the lottery with just the sixth-best odds to win the No. 1 pick and ended up drafting at a disappointing eighth.
They did not make the same mistake again.
Marks didn’t openly shop Johnson at last year’s trade deadline, but was believed to have been demanding a price of two first-round picks. He resisted moving the small forward at the draft, but dealt him just days later for a core piece of Denver’s 2023 NBA championship squad and the only first-round pick the Nuggets had available to trade.
Porter — who turned 27 on Monday — is two years younger than Johnson and just as good a player. The forward averaged 18.2 points and seven rebounds last season on .505/.395/.768 shooting splits playing alongside Nikola Jokic. He can provide veteran leadership for a young team that is going to have five first-round draft pick rookies, and will be in desperate need of guidance.
But the real key to the deal for the Nets was leveraging their cap space for assets. After re-signing free agents Day’Ron Sharpe and Ziaire Williams to team-friendly deals on Monday morning, that still left Marks with a league-high $34 million in cap space to work with. And he used half of that to pry a pick out of Denver.
The day before the draft, Brooklyn got the No. 22 pick essentially by taking on Terance Mann’s three-year, $47 million deal. On Monday they swapped out the two years owed to Johnson ($21.1 million and $23.3 million) for those owed to Porter ($38.3 million and $40.8 million), taking on almost exactly the same amount of annual salary as the Mann trade and extracting a similar price.
Now the Nets have a projected $17 million in cap space — including the cap hold for restricted free agent Cam Thomas — and have to spend that by opening night.
It remains to be seen whether the Nets will take any more straight salary dumps, or perhaps use that remaining space to facilitate three-team deals for other teams. Either way, after paying the Houston Rockets heavily to reacquire next year’s natural draft pick — in a loaded class that will likely feature AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Nate Ament, Cameron Boozer and Mexico’s Karim Lopez — the Nets are disincentivized from making any win-now trades.
