While I was watching the Nets get the snot beat out of them by the Magic on Thursday night, my television emitted a loud bang and went blank.
The jokes write themselves, whether it was the one about the unit as a live being with empathy who wished to spare me the gruesomeness of Brooklyn’s middle school-like efforts to handle the basketball without giving it away to the Magic, or how the team’s consistently abominable quality over the last six weeks exceeded the TV’s toleration limit and made it want to terminate its existence.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, from the perspective of my family members), my household has other means of viewing sports content.
Not that such content got any better. Saturday’s contest versus Washington was an affront to the league’s competitive model. The Wizards showed up in Brooklyn with a proverbial pickup squad—of their eight available players, three were on two-way deals while another was on a 10-day contract—and fell behind by 34 points in the second quarter. The Nets then said, “Hold my beer”, and proceeded to allow their initially indifferent opponent to creep back into the game before closing out a 127-113 victory. Someone had to.
Such is the way it goes for fans of the 30% of the league’s teams who are committing to a tank for better Draft Lottery odds at the May 10 drawing. Some of those clubs have to worry about Draft slot protections from prior trades that they don’t want conferred. For instance, Washington’s 2026 first-round pick was traded to New York, but only if their slot falls out of the top eight. Saturday’s lineup was just one way to make sure that won’t happen.
Hello, Commissioner Adam Silver? You might take note that there is more than a third of the season remaining. This is all your fault in that you’re too busy concocting fake tournaments, international affiliations, and placing games all over the cloud to notice the disillusionment in your core audience. My own sons, who love the game, call the NBA “a highlight league.” NBA League Pass? I’m this close to saying, “Pass.”
After Silver’s 2017 adjustments to the lottery rules, implemented in 2019, blatant tanking has only gotten worse. And the new proposals leaked to ESPN’s Shams Charania in December merely scratch the surface. (See Report On NBA’s Anti-Tanking Measures Misses Underlying Problem for my sure-fire solution.)
Who wants to watch all these games with so many teams trying to lose? Mr. Silver, you’re going to make fans want to shoot their screens themselves.
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Sorry I have to do this every so often, but this is a reminder to the pro-tanking segment of Nets fans that Saturday’s outcome was not the end of the world. The Nets (14-37) have the same record as Washington for fourth place in the NBA’s reverse standings. Sacramento, the league’s worst team, has just two fewer wins.
For those crying about what Washington just did to cement the loss, understand that they had won four of their previous six games, including Thursday’s upset at Eastern Conference leading Detroit hours after trading away a bunch of players for four guys who didn’t suit up that night. Have you seen what the Nets have done lately? Before Saturday, they went 1-10, with four of those defeats in games they got down by at least 35 points. So even if you think they sometimes try too hard, they’ve been bad enough to hang around the basement. This is not last season.
And remember that the finishing position only matters for the slot’s floor, as the order goes by the standings after No. 4 overall. The draw for the top four picks is pure luck. Each of the bottom three finishers, who all have the same odds for picks 1-through-4, has a 1-in-7 chance at the top pick, which is worse odds than betting on a single dice roll.
Yet some folks continue to conflate these two parameters. It’s not required that you bottom out this season to select Kansas stud Darryn Peterson. (I feel the bold is necessary to get through to for some.) In fact, the last place team has never won a lottery under the new format. Dallas got Cooper Flagg with a 1.8% chance from 11th place in the reverse standings and San Antonio, the eighth-worst team, drew No. 2. Reportedly, had the fourth and final ball drawn been a three instead of a seven, the Nets would have moved up to No. 1 overall. That Brooklyn won any particular game that season had nothing to do with it.
The same goes when watching these last 31 games, if you can bear the slog.
I’ll be honest, this one left me a little conflicted. If the strategy is truly to tank this year, then why aren’t the Nets doing what other teams are openly doing — sitting their best players against the weakest opponents? Washington basically rolled out a G League roster, while Brooklyn played everyone. If you’re going to lose anyway against the good teams, that’s where you play your full rotation. Against the bottom teams is where others are managing minutes and lineups.
My bigger concern is the coaching dynamic. I really like Jordi and want him to be the long-term guy, but extended losing — especially repeated heavy-margin losses — can cause players to tune out even good coaches. That’s why full scorched-earth tanks are usually paired with placeholder staffs, not development coaches you want leading the next phase.
So I wonder if this was less about standings and more about the room — getting a win, restoring some confidence, and reinforcing buy-in to the system. If that’s the case, I understand it. But if the goal is draft position, the approach felt inconsistent. Steve, I’m curious which objective you think the Nets were prioritizing here — culture or lottery odds.
I am not sure if on the level of winning a championship any of these blatant tanking efforts have ever worked. The fans are at best given a transcendent player to enjoy within a year or two. The fans and players do not deserve the frustration of watching the players do worse than they are individually capable of and not having any pride in their work.