Saying Goodbye to Nets Tank…And Hello To Nets Tank 2.0

Brad Penner-Imagn Images

The Nets finished their 2024-25 season on Sunday afternoon in a most fitting manner, playing in front of a Barclays Center crowd that rooted for them to lose.

This time is was because the majority of folks who packed the stands were Knicks fans, not Brooklyn supporters who advocated for a tank for better 2025 Draft Lottery odds. Actually, the Nets were already locked in to their slot while a New York loss would have helped Brooklyn attain a better pick later in the Draft. Oh, and those pro-tanking Nets fans don’t typically bother with attending the games; they merely spew their outrage on social media.

In any case, Brooklyn still abided, dropping a 113-105 decision to close out the ledger with a 26-56 mark, the franchise’s worst since 2016-17 and good (?) for sixth place in the reverse standings.

What a waste of a season. The team functioned at its best when taking the lead of veterans with winning pedigrees, so they had to be traded or shut down. If your mission as a fan was to watch for development growth, we learned little about the younger guys, as Cam Thomas (25 games), Day’Ron Sharpe (50 games), Noah Clowney (46 games), and Dariq Whitehead (19 games)—the team’s most recent first-round picks—all suffered through injury-riddled and/or inconsistent campaigns. The remaining cast of unheralded and disregarded players tried hard, but, except for perhaps Ziaire Williams, generated little intrigue over whether they deserved to stick around when the team turns the corner.

The only positive of note was the recognition that Jordi Fernandez, despite being an NBA rookie in the role, can coach. Unfortunately, by the end of the season, his message wasn’t going to be able to staunch the overwhelming tide of talent disparities that kept smacking the Nets in the face—they closed the season 5-21, with their last eight defeats by double digits before Sunday’s eight-point margin to the substitute Knicks.

This was all done so the Nets, which last offseason reacquired the rights to their own first-round pick that had originally been offloaded in the 2021 James Harden blockbuster with Houston, would maximize the pick’s value. Of course, the NBA flattened the odds in 2019, so the differences between slots are not all that material when it comes to landing a top-four pick. The Hawks won last year’s lottery with the tenth-best odds.

As a former accountant in the financial services industry conversant in probability analyses, I get why it had to be done. It doesn’t mean I, or any Nets fan, had to like it. It was so painful to watch that I’d like to lead a chorus in praying: May we never have to go through that again.

Unfortunately, it clearly is among the possibilities on the docket for 2025-26. Maybe even the highest of likelihoods.

Yup, Houston also sent the 2026 first-rounder back to Brooklyn. From too-early projections, that Draft class is supposed to have an even higher ceiling, since only Duke’s Cooper Flagg has risen well above the rest of the many very good but not necessarily great 2025 prospects. Can you imagine the wrath online and on sports talk shows if the Nets go something like 36-46 next season? (Note: I’m predicting Charlotte wins the May 12 lottery. I want to emphasize it’s not because I know anything—I have ZERO evidence of wacky conspiracy theories such as frozen envelopes—but because somehow the most hyped transformational players have often ended up in cities that make sense from the league’s perspective.)

The Nets may have four other picks in the top 36 in this Draft and the most salary cap space in the league, but even if worlds collide and they win the Flagg lottery, they’d be hard-pressed to put together a winning team in one offseason with such a bare-bones foundation. Though some players, like Thomas with his bucket-getting or Nic Claxton with his rim protection, have that one elite NBA skill, only Cam Johnson comes close to possessing the all-around game (three-level scoring, passing, defending, etc.) required for teams to sustain success in the modern era.

The incoming rookies could very well be teenagers and/or players who will be stashed overseas to further their development (while saving Brooklyn the roster slot and salary cap allocation). Though their potential may surface with time, it is rare for any such newbie to take the NBA by storm.

But all the first rounders who do sign with Brooklyn will receive guaranteed contracts, and the Nets pick in Round 2 may be worthy of one as well, like Claxton was in 2019. To repeat from my last post, there’s only so many end-of-bench guys you can keep on a roster for development purposes. Since Fernandez had very limited options in house to put together a competitive rotation, General Manager Sean Marks would basically have to acquire about a half dozen veterans who can still play at a high level in one brief summer period.

So, while “Brooklyn” may be bandied about in offseason rumors regarding stars who want out of their situations, the organization needs to be careful about not “skipping steps,” as Marks once put it. Would they be interested in Giannis Antetokounmpo in the off chance he begs out of Milwaukee? Who wouldn’t? But he’d theoretically be coming to a team comprised of mostly borderline NBA players who haven’t experienced winning. What good would that do for anyone?

No, I’ve accepted that this rebuild is not a short-term process, certainly not just this one year in hell. And no matter how much the team attempts to improve during this offseason with all their picks and cap space, there’s going to be even more clamor for management to dismantle it in the name of tanking for math’s sake.

Good thing we’re all going to live forever.