Former Nets GM Billy King Said on a 2019 Podcast the Russian Invasion of Crimea in 2014 Largely Hurt the Infamous Nets-Celtics Trade

[https://www.rightstorickysanchez.com/podcast/billyking](https://www.rightstorickysanchez.com/podcast/billyking)

I don’t usually post on this subreddit, but I haven’t seen anyone post this before.

Billy King once had a podcast episode in 2019 where he discussed his tenure as GM for the Sixers and Nets in the NBA. He discussed interesting topics like the trade for Deron Williams and, of course, the infamous Nets-Celtics trade in 2013.

He said the original plan was to make two championship runs with Garnett and Pierce (primarily banking on Pierce re-signing in the second year). Then they could somehow clear up cap space to try to sign Kevin Durant (yes, the young KD that would later go to the Warriors) in 2016.

However, the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 messed up their plans because the international sanctions hit Russia hard. Mikhail Prokhorov, the Nets owner at the time, apparently had much of his wealth tied up in Russia and lost much of it. Also, the sanctions made moving money out of Russia very hard, so they couldn’t afford their original plan. While never stated, King also implied that it was the reason that the Nets’ payroll drastically fell after the Pierce-Garnett era.

Interestingly, Billy King never mentioned that Joe Johnson, Deron Williams, and Brook Lopez would still have had to be paid. They were paying over 65 million dollars to the three of them and Thaddeus Young when the cap was only 63 million at that time since the TV deal hadn’t happened yet.

So unless they knew that the TV deal was going to happen, I guess they would have had to trade Lopez and Young to convince KD somehow to play along with Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, ancient Garnett and Pierce, and players on minimum contracts, lol

by Stock-Astronomer2709