The Nets have six games left and their draft position and lottery odds are firming up. They still tanking? No, sir.
With six games to go, the Brooklyn Nets pre-lottery odds seem set. In the reverse standings, they now hold the sixth best lottery odds, sitting two games behind the Philadelphia 76ers who have the fifth best odds and three games ahead of the Toronto Raptors who have the seventh. They have no head-to-head with Philly but face Toronto on Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn. Things could change, but not by much.
With fans and pundits wringing their hands about a “failed” tank, the Nets front office, coaches and players either deny there ever was a tanking strategy or if there was, it failed because the group didn’t want to lose. They went into every game planning on a win, their head coach pushing them every inch of the way, they contend. That ethic continues as Ziaire Williams told Brian Lewis. Nope, they’re not tanking now either.
“If anything, it’s [made me] want to win even more, just to prove all the whoever wrong,” Williams said. “Even now there hasn’t been one game where we’ve purposely tried to lose, or thinking we’re going to lose. We want to win every game. And we’ve got a competitive group, a group that loves each other and wants to win every night.
“You’ve gotta build those habits. You see the same teams losing every year because they’re just not playing with winning habits. You’ve always got to do the right things to win, whether you want a pick or not. I feel like that’s the [right way]. The basketball gods are going to bless you if you’re doing the right thing. So it’s the same approach. And every game is still fun. Of course our record isn’t what we want it to be, but we’ve learned a lot this year, and it’ll be even better next year.”
Or as the most successful Brooklyn GM ever, the Dodgers Branch Rickey, famously said, “Luck is the residue of design.”
If there are players who believe in losing for the greater good, they haven’t made themselves known. Indeed, Williams comments were far less scathing than Cam Johnson’s on those fans who want their team to lose.
“We don’t care. We do not care what they say about that,” Cam Johnson said in mid-February. “Listen, at the end of the day, the 15, 18 guys on his team have a job to do, and our job is to not try to get a draft pick. Our job is simply to win basketball games, the basketball games that are in front of us, and that’s what we’re going to put our full effort towards. We don’t care about all that other noise.
“If that’s what they think, then they’re not really a fan. They don’t want us to succeed. You’re going to ask our own players to lose? We’re not going to do that. We’re out there to compete, to win every game.”
Their coach has been making the same point about tanking in a more diplomatic way, but there has been no stop to his go even this late. Drew Timme in talking about the win over the Wizards Saturday described Fernandez’s half-time talk this way, adding to what Williams said.
“Coach told us basically to nut up, in a PG way. He was like y’all got to (fight).” said Timme and fight they did, winning in the end. Good win, but as many will tell you, that was the night when the Sixers passed the Nets.
Things are a tad different. The combination of Brooklyn and Long Island ending the competitive portions of their season and some nagging injuries has led to the return of Dariq Whitehead, the three two-ways and Timme’s signing. Now, said the Nets, it’s about evaluation as well as winning.
For the front office, architects of the rebuild, the “T” word remains anathema. They don’t admit to it and contend that Fernandez and his staff “coached to win every game” as one league source put it until they were out of contention. They do admit to not upgrading the roster. There is, of course, a big gap between that and what the Sixers in particular are doing. Just this morning, Shams Charania reported that Philly is shutting down Tyrese Maxey, one day after the Sixers announced Joel Embiid was undergoing surgery. They’ve now dropped nine straight and are 3-24 since the deadline.
The Nets are also shutting some of their own players down, but the scale is different. On March 15, Cam Thomas was declared out for the season with his recurring hamstring issues. Yesterday it was Noah Clowney and his recurring ankle woes. Meanwhile, both Day’Ron Sharpe (knee) and Cam Johnson (back) are out again vs. Minnesota. Fernandez is hopeful they’ll be back, but by this point in the season, who knows.
The tank — not matter what you call it — is not the rebuild. If the ping pong balls fall the right way and Cooper Flagg leaves the floor of Barclays wearing a Nets’ cap, that would be one thing, but more than likely (90.5%), the night of June 25 will be less portentous.
Zach Lowe in his inaugural gig with Bill Simmons on the Ringer yesterday noted that the Nets next foray into the news sphere will likely be focused on Giannis Antetokounmpo (and in the process, he too made a judgment on how the tank went.)
We’ve tiptoed around this territory two or three times in the last five years and never gotten there. I don’t know what else to say other than — a lot of the eyes of the league are going to be on the Bucks again if they flame out in the first round. I even saw a New York Post story linked on NetsDaily.com — already talking about Brooklyn’s “Plan A.” I thought Plan A was “suck for two years,” but they couldn’t even execute that plan well enough — at least lottery-wise.
Whether the GreekSeek (copyright pending) succeeds, Lowe, of course, is right to distinguish the lottery odds, if not the lottery itself, from the rebuild. Fernandez is near universally seen as a great hire and there are other positives out there in the number of picks, tradeable picks, cap space, etc.
In the meantime though, from now through May 12, the conversation will be about that “T” word. Enjoy?