Consensus Take Says Nets Can’t Tank Without Own Picks—Why Not? They Did It Successfully Before

Given that I’m a Nets fan who's on the downside of the life expectancy curve, I want the team to be good every season. That’s why I’ve usually been on board with the organization going all-in on big-name stars even when they came at exorbitant costs.

Make no mistake, the Nets, as currently constructed, aren’t good. This idea floated by some, including in a recent piece in The Athletic, that Brooklyn is “very likely” to earn a playoff berth by running it back with this core is laughable.  

The flaws that were exposed in Brooklyn’s four-game sweep at the hands of Philadelphia in the first round—namely the ability to create offense out of isolation and rebounding—won’t just disappear with a few weeks of training camp and the return of Ben Simmons. They need specific kinds of talent that isn’t apparent on the roster as currently projected.

In the offseason, we can all have some fun speculating about certain moves Nets General Manager Sean Marks can make to improve the team—my last post concluded that mortgaging the future for Portland point guard Damian Lillard might be the best viable option to take advantage of a versatile but not-so-young supporting cast.

In the same post, I “dismissed” the option of Marks going into the offseason as a seller, for the Nets forfeited the rights to all their own draft picks through 2027—outright or via swaps—in the 2021 blockbuster trade with Houston for superstar James Harden, who was flipped a year later to the Sixers in a disastrous deal that returned Simmons’ anvil contract along with his physical and mental issues. “Tanking” would only benefit Houston’s future, not Brooklyn’s, right?

Upon further review, I got to thinking that the following argument can also be made: So what?

The Nets have done this before, rather successfully in fact, after hitting rock bottom so hard in the aftermath of the 2013 Kevin Garnett/Paul Pierce trade that it gifted Boston Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum in back-to-back drafts, setting that iconic franchise up for perhaps a half decade or more of title contention. And Boston is in Brooklyn’s division, not in the other conference like Houston.

I would further argue that Marks did his best work in those early years after his hire in February 2016. He viewed those picks as “sunk costs” and did not allow them to sway his rebuilding plan, even if it meant another two seasons in hell while Boston flourished.

What was best for the organization then was to start over by emphasizing a development culture. In his first two years, Marks swapped his best veterans like Thaddeus Young and Bojan Bogdanovic for draft picks that became Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen, respectively. His best player. Nets all-time leading scorer Brook Lopez, was used in a trade for D’Angelo Russell, who was a 21-year old former No. 3 overall pick two years earlier. In another steal, the Nets dealt washed Trevor Booker for a package that included the pick that was later used to draft center Nic Claxton.

Those trades and the internal development of their young players was what made the Nets so attractive to Durant and Irving in the summer of 2019. What happened in the subsequent years was a litany of blunders, but I’m not rehashing that again.

The two situations are not an apples-to-apples comparison, for the current individual Nets have significantly higher market values than what Marks started with and Brooklyn already boasts a decent stable of picks from the Phoenix and Dallas compensation in the February dumps of superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, respectively, but the past is instructive. However, it should be noted that other than Phoenix’s first-round 2023 pick (No. 21 overall), the other five of the acquired first-rounders are 3-to-7 years out.

That what makes the offseason debate about the team’s direction not so cut-and-dried. Play each scenario out like chess:

A) Running it back by re-signing restricted free agent Cam Johnson and improving on the fringes

By far the worst route. The Nets would be on the path to qualifying as a luxury tax repeater for a mediocre product. I can’t envision owner Joseph Tsai signing up for that. Then again, they just might.

B) If at first you don’t succeed…

The Lillard-or-comparable star play. Unfortunately, this path would probably have a limited ceiling as well. Remember, a counterparty like the Blazers wouldn’t give Lillard away—I would think they’d want the best players Brooklyn could offer, with maybe Mikal Bridges and Johnson completely off the table. That could mean a wing like Dorian Finney-Smith or Royce O’Neale, Claxton, Joe Harris (to make the money work), and/or a young player like Cam Thomas—in addition to all of Brooklyn’s acquired picks. Maybe the deal could be less painful if it were expanded so that the Nets could offload Simmons instead of Harris and get back center Jusuf Nurkic.

Still, how good would a team that started Lillard, Bridges, Johnson, O’Neale and Nurkic with Spencer Dinwiddie, Harris, Day’Ron Sharpe plus taxpayer midlevel/veteran minimum exception guys off the bench be? A six seed? With the inevitable injuries, that configuration could just as easily result in a version of Indiana East. Just good enough to tease. Again, this would be for a club that would likely breach the luxury tax line.

Not so ideal, when you think hard about it.

C) The full-blown tank

The least likely of the options since it would result in a plethora of sections with empty seats inside Barclays Center for the next two-to- three years. However, it should be explored, for the Nets could probably get first-round picks in separate auctions for O’Neale, Finney-Smith, and Claxton plus multiple 1s for Bridges. It would be foolish to lose Johnson for nothing, so maybe a sign-and-trade could be worked out.

As much fun as it would be around every draft, fans would be begging for the Nets to sim the actual seasons.

D) The partial tank

Dump everyone but Bridges and Johnson, filling in the gap years where the Nets’ picks belong to Houston, and rebuild around the Twins for the next three seasons. Think about it. It’s not like Bridges had a whole lot of offensive help this past season. Maybe the NBA skill of some of the filler players will be the ability to create a few buckets so Bridges wouldn’t always have to the opponent’s focal point on every possession. Yes, it would still be very bad, but what difference does it make anyway if the Nets win 25 or 35 games in 2023-24?

In the big picture, it would allow Marks to do what he does best—find young players in the drafts and off the street to develop, only with exponentially more rolls of the dice this time.

Sometimes, it’s not a bad thing if history repeats itself.