For Those Hoping Nets Lose Out, Get Over It

Ashley Landis/Associated Press

Here’s your monthly reminder for those freaking out over the Nets’ failure to lose every one of their remaining games: It’s a lottery.

Brooklyn’s 110-98 shocker in Houston on Saturday night, its second consecutive win, could end up proving to be immensely damaging to the tanking mission espoused by a good chunk of the fan base, not to mention Nets management.

Or it could be meaningless.

Say the Nets end up with the sixth-worst record and Team 4 wins the right to select Duke’s Cooper Flagg with the No.1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. Would Nets fans feel worse about how their team approached this season than their counterparts in Washington, assuming that club wasted an entire campaign with a single-digit victory total only to get the wrong end of the nearly 50/50 odds of picking fifth?

Nets General Manager Sean Marks did trade the equivalent of four first-round picks to Houston this past summer to get back the rights to the team’s 2025 and 2026 first rounders that were originally moved in the 2021 James Harden blockbuster. Ideally, the team would like those picks to be as high as possible, with blatant tanking deemed an acceptable strategy to enhance those chances.

But in a single drawing with more flattened odds since the 2019 rule changes, the slot where any lottery team will pick will come down to uncontrollable luck. Get over that. This isn’t the NFL, where finishing last automatically means drafting first.

And also understand that the 2025 pick is a swap, meaning the Nets would have been picking in Houston’s slot at No. 27 based on current standings had they not made the trade. So even if Brooklyn gets a rotten draw at, say, No. 7, what would the required compensation have been for them to move up 20 slots in a class this highly-regarded? At least two other 1s, right? I can’t recall the last time a trade up of that magnitude happened And the Nets still get their 2026 pick back for another supposedly loaded class where they used to have no picks.

So spare me the whines that Marks sabotaged his plan by not completely blowing up the team to ensure a top 5 pick. I’ve watched more college basketball this season than I ever cared to and I can tell you that the next LeBron James/Victor Wembanyama sure thing isn’t coming out this year. Even Flagg, who fills every column in the stat sheet, has work to do in order to develop into his perennial All-Star ceiling.

When it comes to the rest, beware highlights showing magnificence that can warp the true picture. They’re all flawed in varying respects and drafting kids will always be a crapshoot.

I’ve watched Rutgers forward Ace Bailey play more than any potential Nets pick because he’s projected to go anywhere from No. 2-through-5. While I’ve seen some of those patented contested turnarounds go down a la Kevin Durant, the video packages somehow don’t include the airballs on his other attempts from those spots. I attended his game at Madison Square Garden against Michigan State last weekend where he went 4-for-17 with 3 turnovers and watched him struggle against Michigan on Saturday, misfiring on 12-of-15 attempts with 3 more turnovers. He is not where the Texas KD was at the same stage.

Granted, Rutgers has been without Bailey’s running mate Dylan Harper, the consensus second-best player in the class behind Flagg, due to an ankle injury, and the rest of the Scarlet Knights are so bad that they probably would have gone winless had it not been their incredibly good fortune to land these highly-prized recruits. However, I can see why Bailey continues to be a polarizing prospect whom several analysts ding for poor ballhandling, passing, and what one labelled as “space cadet defense.”

The bottom line is that no one can guarantee that Bailey’s NBA career will exceed that of the player taken four slots later. A historical analysis chart of picks and success is irrelevant for any one individual Draft.

Mock Drafts have the Nets selecting from among Tre Johnson (Texas), Kasparas Jakucionis (Illinois), and Khaman Maluach (Duke) at No. 6. If even the worst team has about a 1-in-7 shot, worse than a dice roll, at Flagg and about a coin flip of picking fifth, is this such a terrible consolation prize for winning a few extra games the Nets weren’t supposed to?

Like last night in Houston. The Nets took down the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference on the road and in decisive fashion. On the Rockets postgame show, the studio hosts and Head Coach Ime Udoka appeared shellshocked, but they all acknowledged that Brooklyn simply wanted the game more, outworking one of the hardest-working clubs in the NBA for four quarters despite a depleted roster. Ziaire Williams was a freaking menace on both ends, leading Brooklyn in scoring with 21 points. Keon Johnson executed dimes from the Ben Simmons catalog. And Nic Claxton kept his cool through the shenanigans of Houston agitators Dillon Brooks and Steven Adams.

It was bonkers. Since Marks traded away Dennis Schroder and Dorain Finney-Smith, the Nets had gone 3-14. Two of the wins came against fellow tankers Portland and Charlotte while the upset over Milwaukee on January 2 was the last game Cam Thomas and Cam Johnson, the team’s top two remaining scorers, played together before both got hurt.

Thereafter, the offense crumbled. Only Washington and Orlando registered a lower offensive rating in January, per NBA.com. Simply creating a high-quality look was a chore. In short, the team was unwatchable.

Yet fans like me still watched, with the understanding that players and coaches do not partake in the tanking. While I accept the season’s Bizarro mission, it can still get discouraging when I see the team display substandard effort or when solid effort isn’t rewarded.

But games like last night’s, where one witnesses such a flabbergasting result, are why we watch—and care about—sports in the first place. I’ll worry about the marginal change in the lottery odds another day.