Brooklyn’s season mercifully ends on Sunday.
Then they’ll begin what Nets head coach Jordi Fernandez repeatedly calls the most important summer season of their lives.
Hyperbole apart, it’s simple to see why.
The Nets’ future will largely be determined in precisely a month on the NBA Draft Lottery on Might 12.
It hasn’t even occurred but, but it surely’ll be one of many extra pivotal factors of their current historical past.
It’s why this season was this attempting and tiring.
No matter what occurs in Sunday’s season finale in opposition to the Knicks, Brooklyn is assured to complete with the league’s sixth-worst report — and this the lottery’s sixth-best odds.
The Nets have a 9.0 % probability of profitable and 37.2 % odds of securing a coveted high 4 decide.
However by far the likeliest end result is much worse, touchdown seventh (29.8 %) or eighth (20.6).
Brooklyn GM Sean Marks has assiduously collected not solely essentially the most cap house within the league (properly over $50 million this summer season) but in addition essentially the most future draft picks (31).
The Nets have 5 picks in June, 4 of them first-rounders.
Coming into the weekend, they have been slated to draft sixth, tied for 18th, tied for twenty fifth, twenty seventh and thirty sixth.
“We’re not going to know the place the lottery goes to fall as a result of that’s a part of the percentages and so forth,” Fernandez stated not too long ago. “So, you may solely management what you may management, and proper now that’s what we all know for positive.
“This isn’t the tip of something. … That is simply the subsequent recreation, the subsequent recreation going into an important summer season of our lives.”
After Sunday’s finale on the Barclays Middle, the rival Knicks will head off to the postseason whereas the Nets go to the offseason.
That’s the place Marks may have essential calls to make.
Some shall be impacted by issues out of their management.
Potential ties — and there’ll possible be some, with 9 groups crammed inside 4 video games of one another within the standings — shall be damaged days after the common season ends.
Then comes the all essential lottery, the place the Nets might land Cooper Flagg or tumble as little as tenth.
That, in flip, might affect what comes subsequent.
Sources have repeatedly advised The Put up that a part of the concept in amassing a league-best 13 tradeable first-round picks was to not truly make all of them however to make use of no less than a number of in commerce for a longtime star.
Two separate sources have steered that Giannis Antetokounmpo is on the high of the want listing, ought to he ever develop into out there.
But when he doesn’t?
The Nets not solely need to make selections on their very own free brokers — restricted free brokers like Cam Thomas, Day’Ron Sharpe and Ziaire Williams, in addition to unrestricted ones like Trendon Watford — however available on the market as properly.
Which means deciding on a course.
Do they tank? Or do they fight?
They’re within the distinctive place of being the one staff aside from Detroit (and presumably Utah) with ample cap room.
They may hand provide sheets to youngish restricted free brokers that match their timeline, like Josh Giddey, Quentin Grimes, Santi Aldama and Jonathan Kuminga, or unrestricted free brokers resembling Ty Jerome (and Naz Reid, ought to he decide out).
However that comes with a catch.
Or extra like a Catch 22.
Diving heavy into the marketplace for impactful gamers — even when they squeeze them into optimistic contracts that shall be tradable property in a 12 months — will undermine their potential to tank once more subsequent season, in a loaded 2026 draft class that’s purported to be each bit as deep as this one.
They clearly bought subsequent 12 months’s decide for a motive.
Marks had shorted the Suns within the Kevin Durant commerce, and it appears to be like smart.
Parting with these Phoenix picks final summer season was an expensive worth to pay to get their very own 2025 and 2026 first-rounders again from Houston.
Touchdown an MVP like Antetokounmpo is clearly a house run, however would including lesser gamers be price turning that Rockets commerce right into a sunk price?
The opposite choice after all is for Marks to observe the blueprint of his first profitable Brooklyn rebuild.
He might ink much less impactful gamers to one-year offers — or two-year pacts with a staff choice — to punting that cap house into 2026 for a loaded free agent class, whereas aiming for one more excessive lottery decide.
After buying and selling Dorian Finney-Smith and Dennis Schroder early this season, he might flip Cam Johnson and Nic Claxton for lesser gamers with hefty expiring offers that include first-rounders connected.
Briefly, getting paid picks to lose.
Or having his cake and consuming it too.
