Despite Fans’ Tanking Wishes, Nets’ Competitive Spirit Unlikely To Diminish
A sizable contingent of Nets Nation can’t fathom why Brooklyn is making the art of tanking look so darn difficult. Other clubs (we see you Toronto and Philly) in Brooklyn’s lower tier position aren’t making any pretenses. In the last couple of days, several of the bottom-seven teams have given away wins as if they were Oprah.
Meanwhile, the Nets have been scrapping and clawing for most of the season, perhaps winning a few too many games than is desired if the mission was to finish with the league’s worst record, or at least the worst three that will all have the same odds for the first four selections in May’s NBA Draft Lottery. Brooklyn (23-46), thanks to someone named Baylor Scheierman, who came off Boston’s bench to drain all but one of his seven three-point attempts to lift the host Celtics to a 104-96 victory on Tuesday night, is essentially tied for fifth with Philadelphia in the reverse standings and a game “up” on seventh-place Toronro.
Against the defending champions, who were playing without All-Stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the Nets hung around, as they have been wont to do throughout much of a difficult stretch of 12 defeats in their last 15 games. The last eight of them have been decided by single digits, a streak that was last seen in 2018, according to a YES Network graphic. Had a few more of Brooklyn’s three-point looks gone down during crunch time in any of those contests, maybe pro-tanking Nets fans would have been enduring more sleepless nights over their team’s “plight.”
Sorry, pro-tankers, this is likely to continue. The Nets will keep playing as if their professional lives depend on it…because it does.
Only four members of the Nets’ current roster (Cam Johnson, Nic Claxton, and sophomores Noah Clowney and Dariq Whitehead) have full guaranteed contracts for next season. Keon Johnson (approximately $270,000) and Maxwell Lewis ($100,000) have relatively small partial guarantees, according to Spotrac.com. Tosan Evbuomwan, a two-way player on a two-year contract, doesn’t count in roster and salary cap calculations.
All these potential open slots might make it seem like the incumbent Nets on expiring contracts have a distinct advantage to return. Except they need to take into account what’s coming down the pike in terms of Draft picks and cap usage.
Everyone is focused on Brooklyn’s own pick that was returned to them in a trade with Houston during last offseason and where it will land in the lottery. However, the Nets will also be on the clock for three other selections in Round 1, slated as of this writing as No.’s 19, 26, and 27, per Tankathon.com. They’ll also have the fifth pick in the second round (No. 35 overall). The Draft class is said by pundits to be inordinately deep.
We don’t know what Nets General Manager Sean Marks has in store for those picks—trade possibilities include up or down, into a future Draft, or as part of packages for veteran players. He could also take an international prospect that has an option to be stashed while developing. Or he could just make all his picks. Remember, signed first-rounders get guaranteed deals, and a good second-rounder (like Claxton in 2019) could conceivably warrant one as well.
Though I’d speculate that it’s the lowest-probability scenario, let’s assume that the Nets take all five rookies into training camp in September. Add that to the four other fully-guaranteed players and all of a sudden the number of open roster spots dwindles to six for:
Cam Thomas (restricted free agent)
Day’Ron Sharpe (restricted free agent)
Ziaire Williams (restricted free agent)
Maxwell Lewis (partial guarantee)
Keon Johnson (patrial guarantee)
Jalen Wilson (team option)
Tyrese Martin (team option)
D’Angelo Russell (unrestricted free agent)
Trendon Watford (unrestricted free agent)
De’Anthony Melton (unrestricted free agent)
From those on the above list, only Melton, who was already designated as out for the season when acquired in the December 15 Dennis Schroder trade with Golden State, could be labeled as a goner. Other than Thomas the bucket-getter, are we sure that Marks wants some, none, or all of the rest of them back? Sharpe and Williams are easy to retain given their restricted status, though if some team came through with a full nontaxpayer midlevel contract for either of them, Marks would have to think about matching. Wilson and Martin will be 25 and 26, respectively, next season—are they getting too old to still be deemed a development project? And as for DLo, Watford, Lewis and Keon Johnson, all of whom have contributed to this season’s squad with their playmaking and/or spunk, none of them are so irreplaceable by guys the Nets could Draft.
Obviously, Marks’ offseason activity beyond the Draft—trades, free agent signings, etc.—could factor into how many slots will be up for grabs. The Nets will not only have a significant amount of cap space this summer, they are currently the only team which is projected to have over $25 million available to play with (Note: Detroit could get a tad below while Utah would have space in the unlikely event John Collins exercises a player option and passes on $26.6 million, per Spotrac). My best guess, which includes cap holds for Thomas and Sharpe (approximately $12 million each) but not Williams and Russell (way too exorbitant), while declining the three team options above, comes out to cap space somewhere in the neighborhood of $65 million.
If Marks is unable to execute a major trade for a star that would undoubtedly create roster slots as a consequence, then his history suggests that he’ll use the cap space to facilitate deals that have the potential to add to Brooklyn’s asset inventory. That might include things like how the Nets obtained Williams last offseason; Memphis needed room, so Marks got Williams plus a second rounder for a player who is now out of the NBA. Sometimes, those trades are uneven and require an additional roster spot be utilized.
Now Williams is just one of many Nets who have 13 games remaining to audition for a job, any NBA job, next season. Head Coach Jordi Fernandez has done outstanding work in getting these players to buy into a team concept when some in their positions might feel motivated to look out for No. 1 and prioritize getting their individual stats up first. For a bit, I thought I saw that creep in when the Nets were losing defensive rebounds out of bounds from battles between themselves, but that appears to have been rectified.
Fernandez could pull the garbage other clubs are using and bench his better players like Cam Johnson, Claxton, and Russell in crunch time to abet the tank, but the Nets evidently see value in maintaining this competitive spirit, understanding that they’ll still lose plenty of games based on their own talent deficiencies.
That’s a controversial decision, one that I have opined on several times in the archives. But for this purpose, you pro-tankers shouldn’t expect the Nets’ players who aren’t guaranteed an NBA tomorrow to make these last 13 games any less stressful.