The Nets’ 113-105 loss to the Knicks mercifully put an finish to their common season.
Subsequent comes the larger stakes: the NBA draft lottery.
In entrance of crew proprietor Joe Tsai, the Nets completed with the league’s sixth-worst document (26-56) — and thus the sixth-best odds within the lottery that would be the basis of their rebuild.
Sure, the Nets have hoarded probably the most cap house within the NBA, however in addition they have a league-high 31 future draft picks, and 5 of them will come on this 12 months’s generational class. They’ll have 4 in simply the primary spherical on June 25 at Barclays Heart, together with their very own pure choose.
That’s why, regardless of all the pieces the Nets slogged by way of this season — main the league in video games misplaced to damage, biking by way of a team-record 27 gamers below contract — it was actually solely Yr Zero of this rebuild.
Subsequent season shall be Yr One, with these yet-to-be-drafted rookies because the constructing blocks.
“As a fan base, you want to say, ‘I remember when they drafted this guy; I’ve seen the development course of such-and-such player,’” Nets normal supervisor Sean Marks advised YES Community earlier than Sunday’s finale.
Marks goes to be the person chargeable for selecting these gamers, in addition to the grand plan.
If the Nets don’t speed up the rebuild by buying and selling for a famous person, they may flip strong veterans akin to Cam Johnson and Nic Claxton for lesser gamers that gained’t damage a 2025-26 tank however come connected with much more draft picks.
The Nets a minimum of helped themselves considerably within the draft Sunday.
The lottery gained’t be till Might 12, they usually’ll have a 9 % shot at successful the suitable to pick out Duke ahead Cooper Flagg and 37.2 % odds at touchdown someplace within the high 4. Their pure choose has higher than even odds at being seventh (29.8 %) or eighth (20.6 %).
Additionally they maintain the pure picks of the Bucks, Knicks and Rockets.
Their Milwaukee choose is in a three-way tie for 18th with Washington (from Memphis) and Miami (from Golden State). The Knicks choice is twenty sixth, one spot forward of the Houston choose.
All ties shall be damaged within the coming days by random drawings in Secaucus, N.J., overseen by Ernst & Younger.
“For obvious reasons … developing doesn’t stop right now, we’re going into a very important summer for us,” coach Jordi Fernández stated.
“After this game … we’ll probably evaluate, and we’ll sit, Sean, myself. We’ll have a plan. We’ve already started with our plan for what we’re trying to do this summer. But to me, the most important thing has been things come at you very fast in this job, and you don’t know until you know. Even though you have an idea of how you want to do things, then when you’re on that chair, things change and you have to pivot one way or the other.”
