{"id":148940,"date":"2025-09-17T04:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T04:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/148940\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T04:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T04:33:09","slug":"hawks-trade-kobe-bufkin-to-nets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/148940\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks Trade Kobe Bufkin To Nets"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 16: The trade is official, according to announcements from both teams. The Nets waived big man David Muoka<\/a> in order to open up a spot on the 21-man roster for Bufkin.<\/p>\n

\"\"September 15: The Hawks and Nets have agreed to a trade that will send former first-round pick Kobe Bufkin<\/a> from Atlanta to Brooklyn in exchange for cash considerations, reports Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter link<\/a>). The Hawks will acquire $110K in cash, per Michael Scotto of HoopsHype (Twitter link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The 15th overall pick in the 2023 draft, Bufkin has battled injuries since entering the NBA. He missed a significant chunk of his rookie year due to a fractured left thumb<\/a> and a sprained toe<\/a>, then underwent season-ending shoulder surgery<\/a> into December 2024, less than two months into his second season.<\/p>\n

In total, the 6\u20194\u2033 guard made just 27 appearances for the Hawks, averaging 5.0 points, 2.0 rebounds, and 1.6 assists in 11.9 minutes per night, with a .374\/.220\/.654 shooting line. Bufkin \u2013 who will turn 22 on Sunday \u2013 has more upside than he\u2019s been able to show so far, so the Nets will take a chance on him in the hopes that he\u2019ll have better health luck going forward.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn has more than enough cap room to take on Bufkin\u2019s $4.5MM salary for this season, which will push the team over the minimum salary floor<\/a>, at least for now. His rookie scale contract also includes a $6.9MM team option for 2026\/27 \u2014 the Nets will have to make a decision on that option by October 31.<\/p>\n

While the Nets are in a good position to roll the dice on Bufkin from a salary cap perspective, adding him to the mix will exacerbate a looming roster crunch. Once the deal is official, Brooklyn will be carrying 15 players on guaranteed salaries and four on partially guaranteed or non-guaranteed salaries. The team also intends to add Ricky Council IV<\/a> to the latter group. A number of those players will have to be waived or traded in order for the Nets to set their 15-man regular season roster next month.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn still has roughly $11.6MM in cap room for now, as ESPN\u2019s Bobby Marks tweets<\/a>, though the club could increase that figure by waiving some of those players with non-guaranteed or partially guaranteed contracts. The Nets would be in danger of falling back below the minimum salary floor in that scenario and will want to make sure they\u2019re above that threshold by opening night.<\/p>\n

The Hawks, meanwhile, will generate a $4.5MM trade exception as a result of the deal, generating a little extra financial flexibility below the luxury tax line and opening up another roster spot for one of their camp invitees to compete for.<\/p>\n

With Bufkin no longer in the mix, Atlanta will have just 10 players on fully guaranteed salaries, plus Vit Krejci<\/a> and N\u2019Faly Dante<\/a> on partial guarantees, Mouhamed Gueye<\/a> on a non-guaranteed contract, and Caleb Houstan<\/a>, Charles Bassey<\/a>, and Kobe Johnson<\/a> on Exhibit 10 deals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 16: The trade is official, according to announcements from both teams. The Nets waived big man David…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,100374,98706,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-148940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-david-muoka","12":"tag-kobe-bufkin","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}