Spencer Dinwiddie has started his negotiations with the Nets and put in his high opening offer. Now it remains to be seen what Brooklyn’s low response is, and how far apart the two sides are.
The veteran 28-year-old became an unrestricted free agent by opting out of the final $12.3 million year of his deal. Now expected to be the top point guard on the market — despite his partially torn ACL in December — Dinwiddie said an offer of roughly double that annual amount would get him to promptly re-sign in Brooklyn.
“Now, for all the fans that think because I opted out I have to leave or something like that, no, this is very much in the Nets’ hands, you feel me?” Dinwiddie said on “The Crossover Pod.” “I think my full max is like five [years], 196 [million] or something like that. And nobody’s sitting here saying I’m going to get five, 196 — so before anybody tries to kill me, nobody’s saying that.
“But the Nets have the ability to do something that other people can’t. If they come to the table like that, and they’re being aggressive and are saying, ‘Hey we got five, 125 for you,’ I would say there’s a high likelihood that I go back to the Nets, you know what I mean? But if they don’t come to the table like that, and they’re like ‘Oh, we’re going to give you a three for 60,’ well, anybody can do that.”
Dinwiddie is talking about a five-year, $125 million contract. That could prove too rich for a team that has All-Star Kyrie Irving at point guard and added former MVP James Harden, which would relegate Dinwiddie to a sixth-man role at best.
For perspective, Toronto’s Fred VanVleet and Indiana’s Malcolm Brogdon both inked four-year, $85 million deals over the past two seasons. What can Dinwiddie command, and from where? The Knicks have interest should he leave Brooklyn. Even if the Nets were to re-sign Dinwiddie outright at $18 million, their luxury-tax bill would skyrocket from $40 million to $114 million, according to the team’s former assistant GM, Bobby Marks, now with ESPN. And that’s not even taking into consideration retaining restricted free agent Bruce Brown, or the cost of using the $5.9 million tax midlevel exception.
Last season Dinwiddie averaged 20.6 points and 6.8 assists in a career year before COVID-19 kept him from going to the Orlando bubble. He began this season starting alongside Irving, before the acquisition of Harden, playing a defensive Swiss Army knife role. But he lasted just three games before a Dec. 27 torn ACL cut his campaign short. It remains to be seen if it’ll be his last appearance as a Net.