The Brooklyn Nets are still open for business as they look to continue collecting assets following the Mikal Bridges trade. The Nets have two prime assets left in the form of forwards Cameron Johnson and Dorian Finney-Smith. Many teams have been linked to these coveted wings, and over at Bleacher Report Zach Buckley came up with an interesting trade proposal with the Los Angeles Lakers.
The mock trade proposal sees the Nets swapping 31-year-old Dorian Finney-Smith straight up for 21-year-old Jalen Hood-Schifino, a guard, in a straight-up swap. On the surface, getting back a player ten years younger than the one going out makes a lot of sense, but let’s dive deeper to see if this makes sense for both sides.
Does a Dorian Finney-Smith for Jalen Hood-Schifino swap make sense for the Nets?
For the Lakers, this is a no-brainer. They’re all in with a soon-to-be 40-year-old LeBron James leading the way and are in need of complementary two-way players. Finney-Smith is one of the better 3-and-D wings in the league with the strength to play against 4’s and occasionally 5’s on the defensive end.
For the Nets things are a bit more complex. Finney-Smith is one of the few remaining trade chips of value they have left. They need to maximize on his return. The Nets have a treasure trove of future draft picks so taking back a second-year player after not having a draft pick in the 2024 draft makes sense.
Who that player is though matters. Enter Hood-Schifino, the number 17 overall pick in the 2023 draft. The recently turned 21-year-old was an afterthought for the Lakers last year, appearing in just 21 games and playing mostly in garbage time, with just 5.2 minutes per game average. In that extremely limited sample size, he looked unimpressive, though it’s not really fair to judge a player off sporadic garbage time minutes.
He lit up the G League, however, and showed some real promise averaging 22.0 points per game, 4.8 rebounds per game, and 5.5 assists per game while shooting an impressive 47.3% overall and 43.2% from three on a healthy 5.4 attempts per game. At 6-5 215 pounds he’s a bigger guard with some defensive upside that would play nicely alongside the smaller guards in the Brooklyn rotation.
Brooklyn needs guards, with only Cam Thomas as a young piece moving forward. Ben Simmons, regardless of recent reports regarding his health can’t be counted on. Dennis Schroder is a nice veteran presence but doesn’t have a future with the team. And Shake Milton has spent the last couple of years falling out of rotations since his initial run with the Philadelphia 76ers.
Hood-Schifino isn’t a natural point guard, which would be preferable to pair next to Cam Thomas, however, he has enough playmaking chops to serve as an occasional lead ball handler. More importantly, his age and draft pedigree should be attractive as the Nets look to develop the core of their next contending squad. They have the time and patience the Lakers do not have to see if Hood-Schifino can reach his full potential.
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Why a straight-up swap doesn’t work
While in theory, a straight-up swap would be approximately equal value, it doesn’t work in real-world terms. The Lakers and Nets are both over the cap. With Finney-Smith making $14,924,168 and Hood-Schifino only making $3,879,840 the Nets would need to take back another contract. Even if that contract isn’t expiring, they have enough cap space to absorb future salary. That will come at a price the Lakers must pay, however.
If the Lakers add guard Gabe Vincent and his $11,000,000 salary to the deal, the math adds up to make the trade go through. Vincent is signed through this year and next, and is of no value to the Nets. A knee injury kept him out of most of the regular season, and when he did play he struggled to crack the rotation averaging just 3.1 points per game and shooting 30.6% from the field.
Taking on Vincent’s contract should allow the Nets to get some draft capital back from Los Angeles. The Lakers don’t have a tradeable first-round pick until 2029, but they would need to include either a protected first in 2029 or 2030, or two second-round picks, in order to entice the Nets to take on Vincent and his cap hit which goes up to $11.5 million in 2025-2026.
The Nets have the cap space in 2025-2026 to take on that contract without it tangibly affecting their ability to build next offseason. In that case, trading Finney-Smith for a promising young player at a position of need and getting draft capital back for just the cost of taking on Gabe Vincent’s contract would be a massive win for general manager Sean Marks and the franchise.
