For the Nets, the lottery was a letdown.
The Nets fell to eighth in Monday night’s NBA Draft Lottery in Chicago, a result that won’t shock but will certainly sting.
When Nets GM Sean Marks and team governor Joe Tsai made the tough decision to tank this season for a high draft pick, it ended up giving them the sixth-best odds.
They had a 9 percent chance of winning and being able to turbocharge their rebuild with Cooper Flagg. But it didn’t happen.
Sliding to eighth was the second-likeliest outcome for Brooklyn at 20.6 percent, behind only seventh (at 29.7). But considering what it cost them, it will be a bitter pill to swallow for the Nets and their fans.
The Nets sent multiple first-round picks to Houston to re-acquire their own first-rounders this year and next. That enabled them to move Mikal Bridges, tank and rebuild through the draft.
But after suffering through a 26-56 campaign, Flagg was the prize and at least finishing in the Top 4 was a goal.
The Nets got neither.
This will hardly be their first lottery disappointment.
They had tanked their way to a league-worst 12-70 back in 2010 chasing John Wall, but ended up falling to third and having to settle for Derrick Favors. They’ll draft far lower this time.
The Nets’ Makar Gevorkian, VP of Basketball Operations Alignment and Strategic Planning, had been in the drawing room in Chicago. He actually saw the configuration of four pingpong balls drawn that sealed their fate.
Coach Jordi Fernández represented the team on the dais, and saw NBA deputy commissioner draw the Nets logo from an envelope that revealed their bad luck to the world.
The fall could hurt any potential package they might offer the Bucks for Giannis Antetokounmpo. It also means instead of picking Flagg — or even Rutgers’ Dylan Harper at No. 2 — they’ll be further down the board.
The Nets are currently tabbed to take Duke center Khaman Maluach in Tankathon’s updated mock draft.
He’s sixth in Tankathon’s Big Board, followed by Texas shooting guard Tre Johnson, Maryland big Derik Queen and Illinois point guard Kasparas Jakucionis.
It’s hard to find a team that has suffered more in the lottery than the Nets, heartache usually of their own making by trading away picks.
The past six times that the Nets’ pick ended up in the lottery, they all went to another team. Damian Lillard (sixth in 2012), Jaylen Brown (third in 2016) and Jayson Tatum (third in 2017) all went elsewhere.
Monday night was a chance to turn all that misfortune around.
But landing eighth will weaken the best package they have to offer for Antetokounmpo. They do have the most first-rounders (15) over the next seven years, 13 of them tradable.
A couple of Texas teams came out the biggest victors on Monday.
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Dallas won the lottery, defying the odds. They had just a 1.8 percent chance of landing Flagg, the fourth lowest of any winner in history.
After trading away Luka Doncic in a wildly unpopular move, it offers Mavericks GM Nico Harrison a stunning opportunity to flip the narrative.
Meanwhile, San Antonio vaulted up to No. 2. It gives the Spurs a chance to take Harper, or further ammunition — along with the No. 14 pick — to package and bid for Antetokounmpo.
Philadelphia also got lucky, jumping up from fifth to third.
Their selection was Top 6 protected, so if they’d dropped to seventh or lower they would’ve lost their pick.
Utah, Washington and the Hornets all had the best odds to win — an even 14 percent — and every one of them fell out of the Top 3.
The Hornets will pick fourth, the Jazz fifth despite a league-worst 17-65 mark and the Wizards just sixth.
