For the past few years, stars like Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving ensured they came into Nets training camp with legitimate championship aspirations.
With the Big 3 all gone, now any hope of success — and the bar for that is clearly lowered — must come through competitiveness. It’s a trait Jacque Vaughn is intent on instilling now that he’s finally got his first camp as Nets coach.
It’s no coincidence that when they start camp Tuesday at HSS Training Center, they’ll have a roster filled with one-year deals, fighting and clawing for spots.
“Absolutely. That was maybe our No. 1 priority when we set out to do this,” general manager Sean Marks said. “We wanted to acquire guys — and keep guys — that have a chip on their shoulder, something to prove.
“I think that’s what we’ve seen so far, just on their own, playing pickup games. It’s been loud, it’s competitive, and I think that exactly fits with J.V.’s model of what he’s wanting to achieve during training camp. So to have all these guys come in here to fight for positions, to fight for minutes and so forth is the No. 1 goal for us.”
Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson are the cores of the roster, and centerpieces of the Durant trade. But look up and down the roster, and there is competition at various levels that will play out in training camp, from the starters to the last men fighting for the final spots.
But instead of letting it be the elephant in the room, Vaughn hopes to make it more of a call to arms.
“I’m going to address it at the beginning of the year. I think it’s important to validate it, acknowledge it,” Vaughn said. “We’ll kind of enter the year as individuals and my goal is to finish the year as a team. That is the challenge.
“I’ll be extremely honest and lay it out, ‘This guy is on a one-year deal. This guy wants a new contract. This guy, what he wants next.’ We’ll put it out there, open and honest, and then realize we have a common goal of getting the most out of this group. I think training camp being together, being able to learn about each other, forming those relationships is going to be huge going forward.”
Point guard is up for grabs between oft-injured Ben Simmons and Spencer Dinwiddie. While Simmons has two years and $78 million on his contract, he’s coming off back rehab and trying to prove he’s finally fit — and worthy of being a foundational piece in this rebuild, not just an expiring contract to be dealt next summer.
Dinwiddie, meanwhile, is in the final year of his contract and eligible for an extension. At 30, this could very well be his last big payday.
Royce O’Neale — who is the same age and in the same situation — could vie for wing minutes, a competition that gets trickier if Dinwiddie gets pushed off the ball.
Nic Claxton has the starting center spot locked up, but cannot be extended by the Nets and is going to hit unrestricted free agency. A solid season could see him double his $9.6 million salary. What could a breakthrough campaign do?
And further down the roster, Marks handed out a quartet of veteran minimum deals to Darius Bazley, Dennis Smith Jr., Lonnie Walker IV and Trendon Watford — Bazley’s non-guaranteed and Watford’s only partially guaranteed. Harry Giles III has even less certainty, a flier inked to an Exhibit 9 training camp invite.
There is even no guarantee that third-year pros Cam Thomas and Day’Ron Sharpe will have the third year of their rookie deals picked up.
Up and down the roster, there are chips on the shoulders — and contracts on the line.
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