The Nets had no other choice than to sign Brook Lopez, Thaddeus Young

We're still unsure of exactly what next year's salary cap will be, but recent projections have the figure somewhere between $67 million and $69 million. We haven't seen the year-by-year breakdown for Lopez's or Young's salaries, but to make things easy, let's assume they're both getting paid their average annual value during each season of the deal: $20 million for Brook and $12.5 million for Thad.

So, their combined salaries will take up somewhere between 47 percent and 49 percent of the cap in 2015-16. Seems like a lot for two guys who you'd rather be one step down on the totem pole, secondary and tertiary options instead of the initial ones, no?

But don't forget about that rising basketball-related income once the league's new monster TV deal kicks in for the following season, when the cap could jump to $88 million or more. The combined salaries of Lopez and Young would be less than 37 percent of that salary cap, the equivalent of those two equaling about $25 million in today's environment, which appears far more reasonable of a price.

It becomes even more team-friendly in 2017-18 (if there's no lockout, of course), when the cap could climb as high as $108 million, meaning Lopez and Young will join to make for only about 30 percent of the cap, the equivalent of a $20 million combined figure today.