TORONTO — Spencer Dinwiddie fired some shots at the Nets, accusing his former team of not only using him to prop up other players they wanted to trade, but then sabotaging his career as they were shipping him out.
“I understand Brooklyn was going to make the best decision they could for their organization,” Dinwiddie said on a podcast with ex-Nets teammate Theo Pinson.
“To go back to a team that you spent five years and had a lot of success — basically lead the league in assists because they asked you to help feature their trade pieces and whatnot — and then basically kicked out the door. And for them to re-bring up the cancer label because of what happened in D.C., if another team doubles down on that, it effectively kills your career.”
Nets GM Sean Marks hasn’t publicly or even privately ripped Dinwiddie, even after being reached for comment regarding the accusations.
Now on a veteran minimum contract in Dallas, Dinwiddie explained how — despite reservations about how his first Brooklyn tenure ended — he agreed to do everything the team asked upon being re-acquired from Dallas in February 2023.
And he claims his reward for doing so was having rumors back-channeled throughout the league about him.
“You took me from my [sons], basically. And then you asked me to do a very specific task, and I did it. ‘We need to stay in the playoffs. You need to help feature our trade pieces,’ ” said Dinwiddie, not specifically naming the aforementioned pieces. “OK, I will do what you ask of me. And then the reward that they gave me was, we’re going to kick you out the door.
“And, not just that, we’re going to double down on some s–t that happened to you from three years ago. Because if we say it and it’s from three years ago, your career is over. So, you can extrapolate and guess the conversations or anything else that happened, and blah, blah … not to get into all those details, whatever. But effectively, that’s what happened.”
There’s a lot to unpack there.
One is that the Nets’ tank may have started earlier than expected if propping up the value of Mikal Bridges — the only other starter alongside Dinwiddie to have subsequently been moved — was a priority.
Marks plucked Dinwiddie out of the G League in 2016 and was always complimentary of his rise to viable starter.
Dinwiddie left for Washington in 2021 via sign-and-trade, but his divorce from the Wizards was ugly, with several players critical of him.
Dinwiddie was traded to the Mavericks in 2022, and played a huge role in their Western Conference Finals run before the Nets re-acquired him for Kyrie Irving.
His second stint didn’t go as well as the first.
“So, when people are asking how somebody could be extremely scarred by a situation [this is how],” Dinwiddie said. “All the apologies and things for everything to happen the first time, and they’re saying, ‘Hey, we just need you to do these two things, and we got you.’
“And I said, ‘Guys, listen, you remember what happened the first time. It was rocky the first time. Just, please don’t do that. I’m 30. Don’t, please.’ ‘Yeah, no, we got you.’ I said, ‘OK … you have my word I’ll do anything in my power to do it.’ ”
From Dinwiddie’s Feb. 9 debut to the end of that season, his 236 assists were second in the NBA.
He subjugated his scoring to set up Bridges, who went on a season-ending tear and raised his profile.
But in February, a disgruntled-looking Dinwiddie got moved to Toronto for Dennis Schroder at the trade deadline (he was waived, while Schroder just brought the Nets essentially two second-round picks and Reece Beekman).
Bridges fetched an NBA-record-tying five first-round picks this summer.
“To be honest, at this point it’s just an extreme level [of] sadness in a way,” Dinwiddie said. “Because you didn’t have to do that. There was no reason for you to do that.”