Second-Guessing Nets Summer Trades Misses The Marks
When I hear Nets fans second guess General Manager Sean Marks’ offseason trades that bequeathed a haul of Draft picks from the Knicks for wing Mikal Bridges while simultaneously offloading other picks in Brooklyn’s inventory so that they could recoup their own 2025 and 2026 first rounders back from Houston, I’m reminded of the refrain from a song, “ I wish that I knew what I know now…”
As NetsDaily often points out on Twitter, Marks probably doesn’t make the second deal with the Rockets, sending the equivalent of four 1s for the two that were originally lost in the 2021 James Harden blockbuster, without the comfort of accruing five 1s (none of which will be protected unless the Bucks collapse and get a top-4 pick in June) plus a 2028 swap option in the Bridges trade.
It was a calculated move to lock in picks at a better present value. The Nets were surely destined to finish in the lower depths of the league this season, so securing a lottery pick for what is being deemed an excellent Draft class seemed worth the cost.
Except one of the outgoing pieces, a 2025 swap with Phoenix, turned out to be pretty valuable in its own right. Additionally, Marks may have misjudged the talent he had at the outset that, when combined with improved coaching from rookie Jordi Fernandez, led to X number of wins in excess of a tanking team’s desired expectations. This has enraged a segment of Nets fans on social media.
Those who have been following this forum (and my earlier work for WFAN) know that I am not someone you can accuse of holding Marks’ water. He has made plenty of mistakes during his nine years since he was hired to rebuild what was then called the worst wreckage in basketball history. I have ranted about them all with harsh language, sometimes beating dead horses (See: Simmons, Ben).
Not that I was a fan of the teardown (I’m getting too old for this), but this sequence of trades isn’t one of those “mistakes”, even when you consider the subsequent events.
For those afflicted with revisionist history: Had the Nets ran it back with Bridges and repeated their mediocre 2023-24 campaign, they would have ended up with picks 12 and 23 based on tankathon.com’s most likely simulation. The Suns’ pick currently has a 7.2% chance to bump up into the top four. Instead, Brooklyn is slated for 7 (with a 34.8% of a top-4 selection), 22, 23, and 27. Remember, they won’t “lose” a 2025 pick to the Rockets; it will just be swapped with Phoenix’s slot.
Going forward, the Nets now have their own 2026 first rounder plus the Knicks’ unprotected 1s in 2027, 2029, and 2031 along with the 2028 swap. They lost the Phoenix 2027 first rounder and the rights to two of the most favorable 2029 1s between Dallas, Phoenix, and Houston.
While it was common to predict that Phoenix’s later picks that were acquired when Brooklyn dealt Kevin Durant two years ago and can now be cashed in by Houseton would increase in value, I don’t know that many were able to foresee how hard that team would crash and burn this season. If you thought Las Vegas oddsmakers got it wrong this preseason by underappreciating the Nets, the over/under win total for Phoenix (28-33) was about 48.
Now, it’s fair to argue, to a degree, that Marks should have managed this season’s roster differently. While it’s fine to embrace flexibility, sometimes you need to pick a lane to maximize efficiency. Exhibit A is the puzzling decision to keep D’Angelo Russell through to the end of this season. Russell’s expiring contract was needed to make the money work in the December 29 trade of veteran wing Dorian Finney-Smith to the Lakers, but I’m not sure what he is still doing here. The Nets have gone 8-7 in games where he has played more than five minutes. Are they trying to tank or make the play-in tournament?
Others had hoped that the Nets would sell off Cam Johnson, who is having a career year, at the trade deadline, though I thought it would have been more of a dereliction of duty had Marks accepted an offer that was for pennies on the dollar. In addition, Marks did have to wait until December 15 to make the Dennis Schroder trade to Golden State happen because that’s when out-for-the season De’Anthony Melton became eligible.
It just so happened that Schroder, a journeyman who has since bounced between a few more teams before landing in Detroit as a reserve, had a few fantastic performances in a Nets uniform, particularly when the team went out West, that led to wins. Likewise, the Nets went on a 7-3 run last month with a rotation that gave heavy (between 18.5-to-29.4 per game) minutes to unheralded and disregarded players like Keon Johnson, Ziaire Williams, Tosan Evbuomwan, Tyrese Martin, Jalen Wilson, and Trendon Watford. That’s one-third of their season’s win total. And you’re going to blame Marks for that too?
Fortunately for the pro-tankers, the Nets have since lost five in a row after dropping a 127-113 decision at San Antonio on Tuesday night. Brooklyn (21-40) is now tied with Philadelphia for the league’s sixth-worst record and are 1.5 games ahead (behind?) of Toronto for the fifth-best lottery odds.
They seem to be getting worse as they get healthier. The last three defeats have been romps. Whereas the Nets previously had been overcoming their nightly talent deficiencies with hard work and energetic defense, they look like their tank has run out. It could be the mental fatigue that can arise down the stretch of a lost cause marathon season or maybe Fernandez’s often direct approach isn’t being received as eagerly as it was earlier in the year. In one recent game, he called timeouts on consecutive possessions.
That’s #thisleague. Things change, often unpredictably. So, if you’re asking me what the Nets should have done last summer if they had known then what they know now, yeah, they should have made those trades.