Summary
After going undrafted in 2021, Watford signed a two-way contract with the Trailblazers, and played well enough to turn that into a multi-year contract. He's a combo big that is a little bit caught between positions. Watford has mostly played center, playing 71% of his minutes there in '21-'22 and 54% in '22-'23, according to Cleaning the Glass. Generally, if you have to ask which big position someone should play, the answer is likely center, and the Blazers played some interesting five-out lineups with Watford at center. He mostly played power forward for the Nets in '23-'24 though.

Offensively, Watford has some skill and touch inside. He can finish with either hand at the rim or from short floater range. He has hit a decent 68% at the rim, according to Cleaning the Glass. He doesn't quite have the ability to stretch the floor yet. He'll take the occasional 3-pointer, but has hit only 35% thus far in his career, and has a slow release. That sample size is fairly small, so we probably shouldn't read too much into the percentages, but Watford certainly has more to prove as a shooter. If he's going to play power forward, he most likely needs to be a threat from outside. He has good feel and ball-handling ability for a big, and has some play-making ability off drives. 

Defensively, Watford is only 6'9" but he has a 7'2" wingspan which gives him the potential to provide some rim protection. He wasn't a good defender in college though, and certainly has work to do to become a good NBA defender. He gets beat on-ball and isn't the most aware off-ball defender, allowing open cuts and not rotating to help in a timely manner. 

Watford is still only 23 years old, so there's time for him to grow, but the NBA can give up on you quickly if you don't produce.
 
Cap Considerations
Watford will be a restricted free agent with a $2.7 million cap hold and Qualifying Offer, and Non-Bird Rights. This means that the highest starting salary the Nets could offer him using the Non-Bird Exception is $2.7 million. This should be enough to retain Watford, since he settled for the minimum to come to Brooklyn. If it's not, the Nets could use cap space or the Room MLE (if operating under the cap) or their MLE or BAE (if operating over the cap) to offer him more than $2.7 million.

There's also a chance that the Nets do not give him a Qualifying Offer, which would make him an unrestricted free agent. Since Watford was signed for the minimum in 2023 and hasn't yet proven he is anything more than a minimum player, I would expect that he doesn't get a QO.

Other teams will have multiple ways to sign Watford as even teams without cap space could use the Non-Taxpayer MLE, Room MLE, or possibly even the Taxpayer MLE or Bi-Annual Exception to sign him to an offer sheet or just outright if he's an unrestricted free agent. It's also possible that Watford only gets minimum offers again, and may not even get fully-guaranteed offers.