It's been proved time and again that no contract in the NBA is immovable, despite the many hurdles the CBA presents when it comes to big-money players. According to our Marc Stein and Ohm Youngmisuk, the Brooklyn Nets are hoping that's true for some or all of their three highest-paid players: Joe Johnson, Deron Williams and Brook Lopez.
So far, the report goes, no deal is imminent. That is no surprise. It's hard to imagine many takers for a group of solid players whose collective pay-to-performance ratio is so way out of whack. All three are under contract through next season at least, though Lopez owns a player option that could leave him as a free agent next summer. The contracts are an important consideration because even the Philadelphia 76ers, who currently have around $24 million in cap space, might be loath to absorb a deal that lasts beyond the current campaign.
For the Nets to entice a team to shake up its pay structure, they must find teams needing to juggle things from a talent standpoint, or that are a player away from jumping up a tier. The problem with even those abstract scenarios is that the Nets' trio hasn't really played at an impact level. So the Nets won't have an easy time dealing any of these players at all, much less getting a good return in terms of future assets or a player who fits with Brooklyn's young group of Mason Plumlee, Mirza Teletovic and Bojan Bogdanovic.
Yet, big-name players with big, poor-value contracts do get traded. Here's a look at where each of the Nets' trio might make the most sense in terms of a move.