The rebuilding Nets have spent years — none extra painful than this one — accruing belongings.
What would it not take for the entrance workplace to money them on this summer time?
In a uncommon second of transparency, GM Sean Marks in essence mentioned a famous person may flip them right into a contender.
In any other case, the Nets are protecting their powder dry.
“You’ll always have those opportunities. Whether we do or not, when we go in, those are questions that I cannot answer,” Marks mentioned the day after the Nets wrapped up a 26-56 marketing campaign.
“If you’re going after max-level talent, they have [to] automatically and absolutely change the trajectory of your team. This can’t be like ‘Let’s go get this [guy] and lock ourselves into being a six or seven seed.’ When we go all in, you’re going in to compete at the highest level and contend.”
There are a number of gamers like Trae Younger, LaMelo Ball, Ja Morant or Domantas Sabonis that would get moved.
However altering the crew’s trajectory appears like Giannis Antetokounmpo or bust. Or extra precisely Antetokounmpo or tank.
The Nets’ first lottery choose since 2010 — together with first-rounders from the Bucks, Knicks and Rockets — would be the basis of their rebuild.
They paid Houston dearly to reacquire their very own picks this yr and subsequent, a steep value for the correct to rebuild at their very own tempo by consecutive generational draft courses.
In a fluky summer time the place no person can spend large besides the Nets (who’ll have $45 million in cap area even after the holds for their very own free brokers and 4 first-round rookies), the Nets may have a free run at free brokers like Josh Giddey, Jonathan Kuminga, Santi Aldama, Quentin Grimes and Ty Jerome.
However may isn’t the identical as ought to. These solid-but-unspectacular signings — just like the aforementioned commerce targets — would simply carry a play-in crew into the sixth or seventh seed, not competition.
Rivalry means Antetokounmpo — or extra possible, a gradual construct and stacking one other lottery choose in 2026.
“We need to be opportunistic,” Marks mentioned. “On this market we’re at all times going to have varied completely different free brokers and alternatives thrown at us, simply merely being in a prime 5 market within the league; that’s going to occur. We don’t need to get sped up. We’ve talked a number of instances about being systematic and strategic in how we construct right here. We all know we’ve 15 first-round picks within the subsequent six, seven years.
“So, there’s a lot of draft assets at stake. There’s a lot of cap room at stake. And how we use that, it’s probably too early to determine. But there’s a variety of different pathways we can go, and it’s just about being opportunistic as to how we build and when we go all in again, so to speak. And that could be going all in with whether it’s free agents or trades, but it also could be go all in with systematically growing some homegrown talent. We’ve done that in the past and grown some guys here, developed guys here, as well as attracted top-tier talent from elsewhere.”
Getting top-tier expertise from elsewhere now’s executed by trades, not free company.
The brand new restrictive CBA makes signing a number of stars like Brooklyn did with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving basically unattainable.
It additionally makes creating draft picks in-house much more important.
Enter Marks, and assistant GM B.J. Johnson, his draft guru.
“I do think it’s important to have guys under contract that you control the contracts. You drafted them, you developed them, and they got to their second contract under your watch,” Marks mentioned. “It’s tough while you’re attempting to accumulate max-level expertise on max contracts. These days are in all probability gone, of going and getting two or three max free brokers. These are gonna be harder to do.
“But it’s important to have some value contracts on your roster. How we do that? We’ve got to draft right. I think our draft process has worked. We know what’s at stake this year. BJ’s done a heck of a job the last several years running that draft process for us. He’s excited about what lays ahead over these next several years.”
