The Nets are moving on from the tanking season to the true season.
From losing to the lottery.
Brooklyn is mercifully done with tanking, put out of their misery with a 136-101 thrashing before 18,778 in Toronto.
But it remains to be seen what all of these beatings have bought them, if their tank works out.
“Now you end this chapter and start with an exciting summer,” coach Jordi Fernández said. “What we have ahead, it’s amazing. The guys are excited, the coaches are excited; the front office, ownership, everybody is. So, we have something special in front of us, and we’ve just got to go attack it.
“Turn the page towards the summer, which is very, very exciting and very important for us. … A summer that we have to get a lot of work done, develop; and the draft obviously, and free agency. A lot of exciting things that could happen. We’ve just got to be ready to work.”
The Nets finished 20-62, matching their 2016-17 mark. They didn’t even have their draft pick at that point, thanks to fired general manager Billy King having traded it away to Boston. But their win total jumped by eight the next season, and then by 14 with a playoff berth the next.
Better luck this time could spur an even quicker turnaround. They’ll have the third-best lottery odds, with a 14 percent chance of winning and 40.1 percent shot at landing a top three pick. Their likeliest landing spots are sixth (26.0) and fifth (14.8).
“Look, I’m not going to lie and say I’m not nervous going into that. I’m nervous for where the ping-pong balls land,” GM Sean Marks told YES Network. “But at the end of the day, if you’ve done your work, if you’re prepared … and I give [assistant GM] B.J. Johnson and the rest of our amateur scouting department a lot of credit.
“So we’re going to be prepared wherever they fall. Obviously, we hope for as high as possible, but at the end of the day, it’s exciting for us to see what other piece do we add to our team and then go from there.”
The top teams in each conference — Boston and Detroit in the East, San Antonio and Oklahoma City in the West — were built through the draft. And largely through tanking.
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But it’s a dicey practice. Despite the Pistons’ tank lasting four years and Charlotte’s far longer, the Nets are hoping theirs goes quicker.
“Yeah, part of drafting five guys to begin with was let’s try and expedite the build. Let’s build as soon as we can, find out who these next Nets are as soon as we possibly can. That’s the same for this offseason,” Marks said. “It could be vets, it could be via trade, it could be via free agency. We don’t know that yet.
“So, I don’t want five-, six-, seven-year rebuilds.”
Nic Claxton added, “Next year, with us not having our pick, it’s time for some expectations to win games.”
That lines up with league observers saying the Nets are expected to at least check in on any stars that become available this summer, even if they don’t bid. They’ll need to be prepared, because the lottery is capricious.
If Marks or Fernández need a reminder of just how fickle, they need only listen to David Fizdale on a recent appearance with Run It Back on FanDuel TV, recalling how he took over the Knicks in 2018 with a mandate to tank. His bosses were eyeing Zion Williamson or Ja Morant in the draft, and promised to ink Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving the following summer.
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In the end, they fell to third and settled for RJ Barrett. Durant and Irving both spurned them for Brooklyn.
“It just didn’t come to fruition, losing all them damn games, donating my record to get Zion Williamson or Ja,” said Fizdale.
“Our people seemed to have thought for sure KD and Kyrie for sure was coming to us. That s–t didn’t work out.”
Nets fans already know all about s–t not working out.
Maybe in next month’s lottery, it finally will.
