J.E. Skeets

$23 million is a ridiculous price for Nick Claxton, who has kind of lost his athletic pop after some back injuries.

He also hasn't had a lot of motivation to play for a bad Nets team.

Unfortunately for him, he's now going to a bad Bulls team, so how's the motivation going to change?

I don't know, but Giddy's a better setup guy than anybody the Nets had, so at least he'll

get some decent rim runs.

And literally, the Bulls were starting Gershon Yabusele at center for the last month of the season.

So this is fine for them to use their cap space, basically saying, we signed Nick Claxton for two years.

I think he will be a Chicago Bull for two years.

Maybe he gets traded at next deadline, but he's not like a building block or anything.

He's literally just a stopgap center.

As for the Nets, they're just raising their floor.

They don't have their pick.

It's going to the Rockets in a swap.

There's also less incentive to be the absolute worst team in the league anyways.

So they're getting out of the relegation zone.

It's not really going to matter for 2027 since they don't have their pick, but maybe for 28 it does.

Yeah, they only took on an extra $10 million in the deal.

They move up from 33 to 28 in the draft, maybe something.

And they do free up more time, opportunity, I guess, for De'Ron Sharp, who I do think they like and will get an opportunity to start there at the five.

I think they prefer him over Claxton at this point.