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Uhh What!?

Today possibly the biggest trade in Nets' franchise history was executed. The Nets have never been much of a deadline dealing team - but this made up for any and all deals that didn't do. In a deal that fragmented the entire franchise from the front office to the coaching staff - they decided to trade not only franchise cornerstone DeMarcus Cousins, not only both of their starting wings in Danilo Gallinari and Khris Middleton but also a couple of rotational pieces in Terrence Jones and Glenn Robinson III and a couple of deep bench guys to make numbers work.

Almost half of the team was shipped out - leaving the surging Nets' rotation in shambles and fans looking around puzzled. We'll try to offer a bit of an explanation here, but there are definitely some hard to follow details with this trade.

Ultimately, the Nets feel like they are losing two guys that served them well for multiple years - Cousins and Middleton. And they're bringing in six guys that they really liked along with four draft picks that will essentially be rolling the dice in the future - none of them expected to be lottery picks.Â

It really comes down to Cousins and Middleton versus Love and DeRozan, and the team apparently felt like the jump from Khris up to DeMar was more significant than the drop from Cousins to Love - especially given the other pieces on the team. Cousins had put up some great numbers lately, but had basically been a jump shooter on offense since Jordan arrived - and the team feels like Love can fill a similar role while allowing Bledsoe, Dragic and DeRozan to excel more than they would have been able to with a more ball dominant big.

One group that can't be happy is the Nets' owner's financial advisors. They nearly used every available dollar of trade exception and cap flexibility to pull this off. And have committed even more money in the coming years. Ownership is feeling the strain but saying it will be okay for now - but it will be interesting to see if that holds up heading into next season. They have control of almost all of their expiring contracts now, but with the rising salary cap other teams may push those contracts pretty high - and how much do you want to be paying your third string wings?

The Nets probably have more talent, options, and assets than ever before - but the coaching staff will have a hell of a time trying to find a winning gameplan this late in the season. Especially when factoring in Kevin Love's injury situation. Bringing in Mason Plumlee was critical to filling the gap between Cousins and Love, and he'll be a great piece to have around going forward.

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