The Nets At The Break: Time To Pick A Lane
My prior Nets post (Shhh, Could The Nets Actually Qualify For A Play-In Seed?) was a “could they”, rather than a “should they”, analysis of Brooklyn’s prospects for qualifying for a play-in seed. Given what we’ve seen from 10th-place Chicago since the trade deadline, I concluded, to borrow from standout YES announcer Ryan Ruocco, “You bet!”
However, the NBA’s All-Star break gives the Nets organization some time to delve into the second half of the equation. But not much time.
To summarize the predicament: Nets General Manager Sean Marks traded the equivalent of four first-round picks to Houston last summer so he could regain the rights to Brooklyn’s 2025 and 2026 first-round picks that had previously been dealt in 2021 as consideration for James Harden. Though the NBA lottery odds have been flattened significantly since the 2019 rules changes (for instance, the league’s worst team has never won a single drawing), tanking can raise the floor of the pick, for the Draft order reverts to the standings order after pick No. 4.
However, the Nets (20-34) players and coaches, as per their natural professional dispositions, have shown zero interest in playing along with such a strategy. No, this is not a good basketball team at all, but like I’ve been saying all season, they’ve always been too good to tank to the necessary degree, especially when this well-coached.
After hanging on to defeat the hurting (physically and mentally) visitors from Philadelphia on Wednesday night, 100-96, the Nets have won six of their last seven games heading into the break. The victory moved them into a tie with the Sixers for 11th place in the Eastern Conference, 1.5 behind the reeling Bulls for the final play-in seed.
To date, you could feel free to call the Nets’ defiance as, well, cute, as in, “Aw, look at those plucky Nets knocking off the Rockets, the West’s No. 2 seed at the time, twice in four days!” That they did so with a bunch of no-names because leading scorers Cam Thomas and Cam Johnson were sidelined with injuries made those victories seem even more remarkable. The team has embraced the “Nobody believes in us but us!” battle cry to the point where the players and Head Coach Jordi Fernandez were all well aware that Monday’s victory over Charlotte put them past the disrespectful 18.5 over/under win total prop bet line.
Only going forward, some of those results might not seem so adorable. I think Nets fans across the spectrum, from the most fervent pro-tankers to those like me who are more agnostic, can agree that the worst outcome from this season would be if Brooklyn doesn’t win enough to reach the play-in but ends up picking ninth anyway.
28 games is an eternity in the NBA. Heck, these days a week is--just ask the Mavericks. Still, the Nets must have a plan as to how they want to approach the final third of the season coming out of the All-Star break shute. In other words: Pick a lane.
If the organizational decision lands on tanking, that means Fernandez has to be on board too. No more crunch time lineups that include guys like Johnson, Nic Claxton, D’Angelo Russell, and, when he returns, Thomas, whose instincts might lead to “costly” wins.
Fernandez could justify this in several ways, from installing minutes restrictions to preserve “banged-up” bodies where those minutes happen to expire in fourth quarters, or he could simply state that he wants to use this period to evaluate his younger players like Dariq Whitehead, Reece Beekman, and Maxwell Lewis. The template could be Wednesday’s final 43.9 seconds, when Fernandez emptied his bench only to see his club nearly gag away a 10-point lead through a series of incomprehensible mistakes.
As for Marks, he should be looking for ways to bring in more G Leaguers to give Fernandez additional, albeit lesser, options. I’m assuming that the reported $1.1 million that Ben Simmons gave back in last weekend’s buyout will be used to convert Tyrese Martin’s two-way contract to a standard NBA deal, as he is reportedly nearing his availability limit. That will open up a new two-way slot to give another young player an NBA opportunity as the Nets play out the string.
I don’t believe the Nets currently have enough room under the luxury tax line to add a second minimum salary player by simply waiving injured guard De’Anthony Melton, so all the team could offer to someone like Long Island’s Killian Hayes is a pair of 10-day contracts. Extracting money from buying out Bojan Bogdanovic, once he is cleared for duty following offseason wrist and foot surgeries, could possibly open the door to rewarding a G Leaguer with a minimum standard deal, be it Tosan Evbuomwan, who has a two-year, two-way contract, Hayes, or Long Island center Drew Timme.
My guess is that this will be Brooklyn’s route over an approach that could fall short of the goal. Who knows what’s in store for Philly, Toronto, and even Chicago? All or some could continue their freefalls, or they just might get their acts together in time to push for the final seed. In the end, Marks has too much invested in maximizing the 2025 pick’s value to not enforce his mission.
As an aside, what I predict the Nets will do has zero impact on what will actually transpire. The same goes for my rooting interest.
Heere’s how I see it: The Nets are winning games with four guys who make more than $5 million, two of whom have been dumped by their former teams. And it’s not like Brooklyn’s salary cap is loaded with max contract players that have to be supported by a lower earning cast--with the erratic Simmons gone, Claxton currently sports their highest cap hit at about $27.5 million, The rest of the Nets’ rotation includes five players on either minimum deals or two-way contracts. Yet they’ve put themselves in this position, awkward as it may be for the fan base, through good old-fashioned hard work. Sorry, but as a Nets fan, I have found their grit through this trying season quite admirable and deserving of cheers.
But I’m well prepared for it to end. Sure, another pile of losses will suck and the May 12 lottery draw can prove to be disappointing, nonetheless. No matter what ensues in the next few months, the Nets and all their fans can take comfort in knowing that they have reestablished a way of playing, if not their code word “culture.” Having a HC who can get players’ buy-ins has to elicit hope that maybe the next time the team brings in high-end talent, it too can overachieve.