Don After; waiting for many years, the Brooklyn Nets have welcomed a Curial player.

Don After waiting for many years, the Brooklyn Nets have welcomed a Curial player.

Almost a month before the NBA’s official free-agency arms race begins, the Brooklyn Nets have fired the first flare, marking the official start of the game. The Nets have traded forward Taurean Prince and a 2021 second-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks in exchange for the No. 17 pick in the 2019 draft, a 2020 lottery-protected first-round pick, and wing Allen Crabbe (and perhaps more importantly, the $18.5 million left on his contract). This was reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on Thursday. The Nets are grabbing your attention right now if they didn’t already have it as a key participant in the 2019 Great Player Migration.

By removing Crabbe’s agreement from their records and obtaining it in exchange for Prince’s pitiful rookie salary, the Nets could theoretically generate up to $68 million in cap space, which would be sufficient to sign two free agents to maximum deals (based on years of service), let alone acquire another through a trade.

Joe Harris is currently the second-highest paid player on the Brooklyn Nets for the 2019–20 season; the team’s cap sheet is as spotless as Adrian Peterson’s infantile knee.

Since the 2013 trade with the Boston Celtics, they have been in a self-created purgatory for five years, unable to take advantage of the draft advantages of their dismal performances for the same amount of time.

But the Nets have nonetheless found clever ways to sign young, cheap talent thanks to general manager Sean Marks’ astute oversight, laying the foundation for not just a significant 2019 offseason but also their first trip to the playoffs in four years. Even so, it’s amusing enough that two weeks before draft day, they traded away their first legitimate first-round pick in six years.