BREAKING: Brooklyn Nets AXE Keon Johnson in SURPRISE move | Who else is on the chopping block?

BREAKING: Brooklyn Nets AXE Keon Johnson in SURPRISE move | Who else is on the chopping block?

Coming up, the Nets wave Keon Johnson as the first of several roster cuts coming ahead of training camp. What other players are in danger of losing their spots? I’ll answer that after this. You are Locked on Nets, your daily Brooklyn Nets podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome in to the Lockdown Nets podcast right here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. It’s your team, the Brooklyn Nets, every single day. I’m Eric Slater, Brooklyn Nets reporter for clutchpoints.com. Thank you for making me your first listen of the day. The show is 100% free on all those great platforms. And on today’s show, I’m going to be talking about Keon Johnson and the Nets decision to part ways with the young guard. I’ll break down where Brooklyn is at roster-wise after the move and what could be next. And we are just over a week away from the start of Nets training camp. Brooklyn have media day on September 23rd and they’ll open camp on September 25th. And they have a lot of work to do roster-wise ahead of them. And you know, Keon Johnson was a casualty here. And I’ll talk about their reaction, but why this move came to fruition. The Nets are facing a little bit of a log jam at the back end of the roster after what has been the busiest off season in the NBA. They obviously made the five first round picks in this draft. So that’s a historic group coming in in terms of volume. And then they took on guys like Terrence Man, Haywood Highmith, now latest Kobe Buffkin uh via salary dumps. And they’re not sending any players out in those deals. They’re just absorbing them into capsu. So because of that, that’s eight players that came in that were not on the roster last season. So these guys, these partially or non-G guaranteed guys on the back end of the roster, there is going to be a lot of competition. And right now there isn’t even a spot for a lot of these guys because the Nets are at after the Kobe Buffkin trade are at 15 standard contracts. So these partially or non-G guaranteed guys don’t even have a spot right now. So it was always anticipated that a lot of them were going to be waved if not all of them. Am I surprised that Keon Johnson was the first one to be waved? Yes, I am surprised. I said previously, you know, I had got questions earlier in the offseason about which of these guys, the partial or non-g guaranteed guys, should get the Net’s final roster spots. And I said I thought Keon Johnson was one of the most likely to stick around. Now, in my defense, that was before the Nets traded for Haywood Highmith and also Kobe Buffkin, both of which play shooting guard or, you know, Buffkin plays point guard and shooting guard, but two guys who are going to be at Johnson’s spot. So that obviously greatly limited the need for him and you know the likelihood of him sticking around and the Nets decide to wave him. But even so, I’m pretty surprised that he was the first of the partially or non-G guaranteed guys to get waved given he’s a guy who had an expansive role last season. I mean Keon Johnson played 79 games. He had 56 starts, was a starter for the majority of the season. And obviously there were injury involved with that, but he did a lot for this team in terms of the volume offensively, in terms of getting opportunities. The Nets really threw him out there and they wanted to see what they had. And I guess you could say that maybe it was more likely that he was not going to be back because he had such an expansive role because the Nets had the expansive sample size and could really make a proper determination of whether or not they liked him and clearly they weren’t too high on him. You look at what he did last season, Keon, he’s also, you know, the youngest of this group of the Parier non-G guaranteed guys, which also includes Jaylen Wilson, Drew Timmy, Tyrese Martin, some other guys who have not been officially announced, but might be uh coming in. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But he has the youngest at 23 years old. He has the most pass pedigree as a former first round pick. And last year, I thought he made some improvements. Like, I didn’t think he played bad. Did I have any illusions about Keon Johnson being a long-term piece for the net this Net’s team? Not really, but he still is a guy who, you know, came in, he was around, I think third or fourth on the team among players who ended the year on the roster in terms of field goal attempts per game. So, he was taking some of the most shots. He averaged 10.6 points per game, was in double digits for the first time in his career, albeit on bad efficiency, which I will talk about later, but really also emerged as a highle point of attack defender for this Nuts team. And that was one of the things that they were really emphasizing at uh summer league in 2024 and leading into last season was getting Keon to tap into his athletic gifts on the defensive end of the floor and really take advantage of those things. You know, the Nets have Steve Hzel who’s one of Jordy Fernandez’s top assistants who coached Keon in Portland and spoke about that on numerous occasions. And I think Keon really did that. He was one of the Net’s better point of attack defenders alongside a guy like Zire Williams who was really a spark plug in that regard. and he flashed some capabilities there. So, I think that that was definitely a positive. But then when you look at the offensive end, the Nets really gave him the reigns to, you know, do a lot offensively to put shots up at volume that he had he never had throughout his career. And the efficiency just wasn’t there. I mean, you look at it, he shot 39% from the field, uh 31% from three. He’s never been efficient. He’s never been a good three-point shooter. He was, you know, albeit on careerhigh volume this year, continued to not be a good three-point shooter. and then he got to the rim a lot, but he wasn’t a guy who could finish. He shot 54% at the rim that ranked in the 20th percentile among combo guards. So, I think that there were just some glaring limitations offensively from Keon. And while the Nets might have liked what he did defensively, having guys coming in like Terrence Man, like Haywood Highmith, like Zire Williams who could defend at the point of attack and then you have a guy like Kobe Buffkin coming in probably going to play minutes at shooting guard who probably has more offensive potential than what Keon has shown. There really wasn’t a place for him on this Net’s roster. But even with that, with how expansive his role was last season, with his youth, with his past pedigree, I thought that he would be going into training camp with the team after the role that he had last season. But clearly the Nets have moves to make. They have more guys who are going to need to be cut and they decided to cut bait with Keon first. And that really leaves questions about the rest of these partially or non-g guaranteed guys. As I said, Drew Timmy, Tyrese Martin, Jaylen Wilson. What’s going to happen with these guys? Where does the Nets roster stand? 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So, I want to just touch on where the roster is at, what is going on. There’s a lot of moving pieces on the back end of this roster. And then after that, I’m going to dig into these guys like Jaylen Wilson, Drew, Timmy, Tyrese Martin, what could happen with them. But including after this Keon Johnson decision with the Nets waving him, if you include the unofficial signings of Ricky Council and Fambo Zang, also Grant Nelson, who I haven’t mentioned or we haven’t heard about, but his agency Gersh, uh, previously reported that he signed an Exhibit 10 contract or was going to sign an Exhibit 10 contract with the Nets. So, including those signings, Council Zang, Nelson, the Nets have 23 players under contract. You’re only allowed to have 21 players at training camp. Now, I think a lot of people have been operating under the presumption that if they’re over, they have these 23 guys, you’re only allowed 21. They’re partially or non-G guaranteed guys who have already been here. Some of those guys are going to get cut. Whether it be, you know, Jaylen Wilson, Drew, Timmy, or Tyrese Martin. That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. you know, these guys who are coming in like Ricky Council, Fambo Zang, Grant Nelson, although they’re announced as signings and guys who are going to be on the team, they also might not make it to training camp. And the Nets have operated this way in the past and they’ve done this with two guys now this offseason in the past couple of days. They signed David Muoka, a 6’11 center out of UNLV, previously played for the Long Island Nets in uh 2023 24, but they signed him and then they waved him. They also today signed DeAndre Davis, a 6’6 wing, played at Louisville and Satan Hall before finishing his college career last season at Miss, but they’re reportedly going to wave Davis as well. And this is something that the Nets do every year. They sign guys, they get their rights, then they wave them and they send them to Long Island and they retain their G-League rights, but they’re doing it a little bit differently um this year than they had in prior years. And Yazy Goslin, friend of the pot, has been on the show several times, uh reported this. Also, Mike Scott, another friend of the pod, reported um reported in regard to the Davis contract, the Nets are giving these guys partially guaranteed deals. In um Muoka’s case and Davis, they’re giving both of these guys instead of signing them to an exhibit 10 contract. And an exhibit 10 contract is a training camp invite. It’s not a standard NBA contract. They’re signing these guys to partially guaranteed standard contracts like Moka and uh DeAndre Davis both got partially guaranteed deals that guaranteed $85,300 and that is according to Yosi Goslin that is the most that the Nets are going to be able to offer these guys as a partially guarantee while retaining their G-League rights and retaining their ability to sign a two-way contract potentially with the team later in the season. So why are they doing that? because the Nets are still under the salary floor. I’ve been through this numerous times on previous podcasts, but after um acquiring Kobe Buffkin, if the Nets wave the rest of their partially or non-G guaranteed guys, they’re still around 4.5 million below the salary floor. So, they have to keep trying to inch up closer to that. And by signing these guys to partially guaranteed deals, which are 85,000, and waving them, that partial guarantee counts towards the salary floor. So theoretically, the Nets could do this with several guys and get closer to the salary floor. Now, by my calculations, if they’re 4.5 million below, you can’t they’re not going to have enough guys that they can partially guarantee at 85,000 to reach the salary floor, but doing this several times can get them closer to it. So, that’s what’s happening with these other players. You know, I’ve tweeted out the announcements about the Nets signing WOA, about them signing DeAndre Davis, and I’m getting a lot of questions from Nets fans. Why are they signing more guys? I thought we were over um you know the training camp, those 21 contracts. We already have more than that. Why are we bringing even more in? Because those guys are going to be way before the start of training camp and they’re not even making it to training camp. They’re going to go to Long Island and that partial guarantee is going to count against the Nets books and get them closer to the salary floor. So my point with this is that these guys who are announced previously announced but have not officially been signed by the Nets like Ricky Council who also according to Brian Lewis has a partial guarantee in his contract. Fambo Zang Grant Nelson’s reportedly in exhibit 10 but these other guys like Council and Zang could be signed given partial guarantees and then sent to Long Island and they might not even make it to training camp. But if they do, the other guys on this Nets roster who are partially or non-g guaranteed, Drew, Timmy, Jaylen Wilson, Tyrese Martin, the Nets are going to have to cut um you know, one or more of these guys if those other guys make it to training camp. So regardless, all of these players can’t come to training camp. And even if guys like Jaylen Wilson, Drew Timmy, Tyrese Martin make it to training camp, the Nets still have 15 guaranteed contracts. So is there any way that one of those guys can make it onto the Nets roster ahead of the regular season? I’ll dig into that when I close out Locked on Nets after a quick break. But before that, want to tell you about our friends over at Open Phone. Guys, if you’re running a business, you know that every mis call is money left on the table. Think about the last time you had an urgent need, maybe for a plumber or service provider. If the first person didn’t answer, did you wait? No, you didn’t. You moved on. That’s why you need Open Phone. Open Phone is the number one business phone system built to streamline and scale your customer communications all from an app on your phone or computer. Guys, Open Phone lets you manage business calls and texts from a single app. The shared inbox feature is truly a gamecher. Your team can jump into any conversation instantly without missing a beat. And their AI agent handles after hours calls, answers common questions, and captures leads so you never miss a customer. Guys, Open Phone is offering my listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.comlockdownba. That’s op.comlockdown NBA. And if you have existing numbers with another service, Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open phone. No missed calls, no missed customers. Coming back from the break, closing out today’s lockdown Nets episode, talking about Brooklyn’s roster situation entering training camp. And I want to close it out focusing on the Nets. Three guys on partially or non-G guaranteed deals. Jaylen Wilson, Drew Timmy, Tyrese Martin. What is their fate? Do they have a chance to make it onto this Nets roster? And it’s really interesting because these are three guys, two of which in Jaylen Wilson and Tyrese Martin played a lot for this Nets team last year. Jaylen Wilson led the Nets in minutes last year. Tyrese Martin also played a fairly significant role and guys who flashed, you know, some encouraging things. Then you also have a guy like Drew Timmy who came in later in the year but is a former NCA tournament star. Uh came in and you know really dominated the G-League with the Nets. Multiple 50point performances. Shot it at a career best rate from three and then he comes up and plays well with Brooklyn. Dominates summer league this past year. So these are all guys who have some promise, but it’s looking unlikely right now that any of them are going to make it onto the Nets roster this coming season. And that is because of what I outlined before with the Nets having 15 uh guaranteed standard contracts with what they’ve done this off season, just a flurry of moves. But is there any way despite that that these guys could make it onto the roster? There are mechanisms by which the Nets can retain these players. You look at all three of these guys first. All three of these guys are eligible to sign two-way contracts. So if Brooklyn is to wave them, they could resign them in that capacity, keep them with the team, split their time between Long Island and Brooklyn. I’ve said previously, I’m just not sure how likely of an outcome that is for any of these guys because these are all guys who I think are talented and will have a demand throughout the league. And if they’re looking at the writing on the wall with this Nets team, if you wave these guys and you know, you brought in five rookie first round picks, you have these other guys coming in via trade, you might question like demoting them from a standard deal to a two-way contract. guys don’t typically get demoted and then stay with that team because it is an admission by the front office that usually that they’re not that high on these guys and that they’re not a priority and if you’re not a priority and if you’re not on an upward trajectory why would you stay with that team the answer is if you don’t have any other options then you can stay with that team but these guys Jaylen Wilson Drew Timmy Tyrese Martin I would expect to have some other options and going through them individually like who do I like the best out of this group I think that Jaylen Wilson probably has the best case to be something in the NBA in this modern NBA moving forward because he’s younger than Tyrese Martin. Like Jaylen and Tyrese play a similar mold. Tyrese a little bit smaller, but both like wing guys. Jaylen’s younger than him. He hasn’t shot well from three throughout his career. But if you buy into the three-point shot, that’s something that could make him a productive player because he’s a decent defender. He rebounds. He plays hard. He has a high motor. There’s obvious athletic limitations there. But if he can shoot the ball at a decent rate, he’s a guy who could have utility and be useful on the back end of a bench, maybe squeak his way into a rotation for some teams. Like there is a story you you could tell yourself where that’s a realistic possibility. Same thing for Tyrese Martin. He’s just older. Tyrese is going to be 27 this coming season. You know, he is really late in his development compared like he spent a lot of time in college, came out, didn’t play one of his NBA seasons due to injury. He’s just late in his development. So, he’s the best three-point shooter out of this group, which you could say maybe lends itself to him having, you know, more of a role in the NBA long term. But, I just think the age, the development, you probably know most of what Tyrese is at this point. And then looking at Drew Timmy, he’s my favorite of the group in terms of just watching him. Like, I love watching Drew Timmy. I like the things that he does. And I do think that he could have a role. He might be the top guy out of this group, but there are just questions about his archetype. Obviously, as a guy who is a center, who’s not a rim protector, has not been a floor spacer thus far in his career. His biggest asset has been his postgame and his finishing and things along those lines. And the role that he’s going to be playing, he’s not going to be a guy who’s garnering like a ton of post touches and running offense through him. So, he’s going to need to develop into a three-point shooter in order to be a viable offensive player at the next level. So, you know, we’ll see how it shakes out with these three guys, but I do think that all of them would have some demand around the league. So, I really question whether or not the Nets are going to be able to maybe like cut them, resign them to a two-way contract, and then try to u move forward with that being, you know, the case of how they’re going to play it. And you look at the two-way spots, the Nets already have Tyson ETN and EJ Liddell, who they just signed. Like, they could wave those guys, but they just signed them. So, I don’t think that they’re going to wave them ahead of the regular season. They’ll probably carry them into the beginning of the year or at least, you know, through training camp. And, you know, is there any way that these guys Jaylen Wilson, Drew, Timmy, Tyrie Smart, outside of the two-way could stick with the team? There is. Like, the first being if the Nets made some kind of consolidation trade where they open up roster spots that way. I think that’s highly unlikely ahead of the start of the regular season. So, I don’t think that’s really going to be the case. Another way is if the Nets wave one of their guys who has a guaranteed contract and opens a roster spot. And that’s not out of the question because the Nets, as I said, have more work to do to reach the salary floor if they wave a player on a guaranteed contract. That still counts against their book. So that would help them reach the salary floor and then they could keep one of these guys who’s on a partially or non-g guaranteed deal and retain that salary, which also helps them reach the salary floor. So that is a possibility of the guys the Nets have under contract. Who would be the candidate for that? There’s two that I can point to off the top of my head and those are Dariq Whitehead and Haywood Highmith are the two guys that I could perceivably see the Nets waving. Do I think they’re going to do that? No. I think it’s pretty highly unlikely that they would wave either of those guys. And in Highmith’s case, I’ve outlined him. He’s been a useful NBA player. He’s been a rotation caliber player on a playoff team for several years now. He’s a guy who played in the finals, you know, very few minutes, but did play in a finals game and he’s a guy who’s battling injury. So, if the injury situation takes out poorly and he can’t come back from this miniscus surgery as fast as the Nets anticipated, they could wave him then because he’s on its expiring contract and there really wouldn’t be much sense in that in them keeping him then. But if they, you know, if the injury situation is playing out fine, I could see him being a guy who they play earlier in the year and then look to flip him at the deadline. and if he plays well, he could perceivably have some value on the trademark and maybe could fetch them another second round pick or some other kind of asset. So that is why I think it’s unlikely that they could wave that they’re going to wave Heywood Highmith. They could that would help them reach the salary floor if they waved him and then retain these other guys, but I just see him as a guy who could be a flippable asset at the deadline. So it really wouldn’t make that much sense if he’s going to be able to come back and play early on in the year. the other guy, Dariq Whitehead. You know, I just don’t think that the Nets are going to wave a guy who they spent a first round pick on in 2023. I think, you know, from an objective standpoint, if you’re looking at the situation for Whitehead at this point, it seems, you know, it’s tough to say this because he’s only 21 years old, but it doesn’t seem like it’s trending in a direction where he’s going to be a rotation caliber player in the NBA. Noah Clowny looks like he has a shot. Dariq Whitehead, we just haven’t seen him physically, athletically look the part at any point since he’s joined the Nets. Obviously, he was coming back from all of those injuries and lower leg surgeries, and the Nets really made a gamble when they took him. It was an upside swing, a bet that maybe he could get back to the athleticism that he showed during that um, you know, in his 2022 in his senior year where it made him, you know, a top three player in that class. He was an explosive player, but then he has the issues at Duke. He has three lower leg surgeries. The Nets were betting that maybe they could get him back. and they had a guy um who had procedures at HSS with Martin Omali, the surgeon, did Caris Levert’s foot surgery, maybe the Nets had confidence that Dariq Whitehead would be able to, you know, reach a similar outcome that Levert did and bounce back that way. Up to this point, we haven’t seen it. You know, Dariq was healthy last off season. He had that full off seasonason to work on his body. Throughout this season, he just he didn’t really look like a standout player in the G-League. He came up to the Nets. He shot really well from three, but other than that, he didn’t really look the part defensively. He wasn’t able to get downhill or do anything offensively outside of the three-point shooting. Now, he’s had another off seasonason. So, it doesn’t another offseason healthy, it doesn’t look like it’s trending towards a situation where he’s going to be like a long-term keeper for the team. But, if you spent a 2023 first round pick on him, if he went through all of these things injury-wise, last year was his first time really playing basketball um since that year at Duke. and even then he was hampered by injuries. So I think you need to give him a little bit more time. I think you need to, you know, at least take the chance that he could maybe develop into something that he could regain some of this explosiveness and that that that athleticism. And I think that that bet and doing that is worth it more so than guys like Jaylen Wilson or Drew Timmy or Tyrese Martin who I don’t really think are going to be anything either. You have more of an upside case with Dariq Whitehead even if it’s looking unlikely. So, you know, I don’t think it’s out of the question that the Nets could move on from Dariq Whitehead this season. I think that I did my hot takes episode with Lucas Kaplan. I think that that was a take that he had that he was waved before the trade deadline or something. Dariq would be and that’s definitely possible. Do I think it’s definitely like a foregone conclusion that they should should be prioritizing Dariq Whitehead over guys like Jaylen Wilson, Drew, Timmy, Tyrese Smart? No. I think it’s definitely a conversation between those guys. I just think Whitehead has a lot more youth. He’s like three years younger than all those guys. He has obviously has more upside in my opinion and I think that you need to see it through with him a little bit longer given that you just spent a 2023 first round pick on him. So we’ll see how it shakes out but given that you know given that I don’t see the Nets waving high or Whitehead and I probably don’t see them making a consolidation trade either. The likeliest outcome right now is that Jaylen Wilson, Drew Timmy and Tyrese Martin are waved in the Net’s role with the 15 standard contracts standard guaranteed contracts that they have on the book right now. Things can always change. Things are always fluid, but that looks like the most likely outcome right now. And it’s tough because, you know, Jaylen Wilson has shown promise, as has Drew Timmy, and as has Tyrese Martin. I think those guys were all good finds around the margins. The Nets just have so many guys on the roster right now because of all the offseason moves that they made and being in asset accumulation mode. So, we’ll see. But we’ll have a lot more coverage obviously about how this roster situation shakes out because more moves have to come ahead of this uh start of training camp next Thursday. But that does it for this episode of Locked on Nets. Hope you guys enjoyed the talk and I hope that you were able to take something from that. I know there’s a lot of moving parts, but I tried to break it down as best I could. If you guys don’t already, make sure to subscribe to Locked on Nets on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast, whether Apple Podcast or Spotify. If you have a second and you enjoyed the show, smash that like button. Leave a comment. Let me know what you think about the Nets decision to wave Kon Johnson. Let me know what you think. Who of these other guys maybe they should keep around, whether it’s Jaylen Wilson, Drew, Timmy, Tyrese Martin. We got a lot more Nets talk coming up. And I’ll have coverage of all of it and more when I’m back tomorrow talking more Brooklyn Nets basketball.

Erik Slater reacts to the Brooklyn Nets’ decision to waive Keon Johnson. He outlines where the move leaves the team’s roster ahead of training camp and what other players are facing uncertain futures.

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