A lot has been made — particularly by Knicks fans — about how Joe Tsai told NetsDaily about the “embarrassment” he faces watching the Knicks revel in their championship while his Nets are deep in their rebuild. But little attention was given to what else the Nets principal owner said. Here, ICYMI, is the full quote:
“Every year, some team is going to win a championship,” Tsai told us. “So it happens that this year that team is in the same city. It doesn’t make us feel very good. It irritates our fan base and it is embarrassing but in business or in competition, in sports, or in anything, you shouldn’t let the embarrassment factor affect how you perform…. [We] had a plan and we’re rebuilding and I think right now we are on a positive trajectory. So it doesn’t change my thinking at all.” (Emphasis added.)
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At the moment, two months before the Nets meet the Hornets on Opening Night, how are things going with said “trajectory?” We’ll know more starting that night. However, in two analysis of where Tsai’s team stands going forward, both published Friday, pundits Sam Quinn of CBS Sports and Stephen Noh of Sporting News —generally — like where the organization is headed but wonder what’s next as the Nets hurdle through the NBA firmament.
Quinn even suggests, in his ranking of the NBA’s front offices that the Nets may be the victim of a faulty narrative. He puts Sean Marks & co. at No. 16 on his list of NBA front offices, one below his last rankings at the February trade deadline.
Brooklyn’s front office probably faces the biggest disparity between perception and reality of any in basketball. The prevailing narrative surrounding the Nets is that they’ve been poorly run and their outlook is bleak. True, they haven’t yet found any truly foundational players, but they have a clean cap sheet and a six-pick first-round draft surplus (not including swaps, though in fairness they owe their 2027 swap to the Houston Rockets). The reality is that this is a pretty promising blank slate if you’re willing to take the long view.
No front office has been unluckier than Brooklyn’s. The Nets built a championship favorite that was ruined by a pandemic. They spent two years tanking and wound up with the No. 6 and 8 picks. How differently do we feel about the Nets if they had wound up with, say, Darryn Peterson and Ace Bailey out of that tank? Or AJ Dybantsa and Tre Johnson? We’re not in the business of blaming teams for poor lottery results.
When the Nets sell veterans, they almost always do so at the peak of their value. They got four first-round picks and one first-round swap for Kevin Durant. Then they took Mikal Bridges, the primary player value from the Durant trade, and turned him into five picks and a swap. The other main player from that trade, Cam Johnson, was flipped for a better player, Michael Porter Jr., and an unprotected 2032 first-round pick. The Nets are as good at leveraging contenders into overpaying for their players as any team in the NBA.
Now, they’re still in the bottom half of these rankings. The Nets are way better than they get credit for, but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect. They banked so much of their future on landing a cornerstone in either the 2025 or 2026 drafts. They didn’t get a top-five pick, and it just isn’t clear what their new plan is. That’s a bit of a problem in light of how baffling components on their last two offseasons have been.
The degree of disaster represented by their five first-round picks last season is certainly overstated. Egor Dëmin would go behind Collin Murray-Boyles and Cedric Coward in a redraft, but he looks like a starter. The other first-round picks were between No. 19 and No. 27, all of which come with relatively low hit rates, and it’s too soon to call any of them busts after just a single season. Still, spending that many picks in the same draft on on-ball players was puzzling. The Nets didn’t exactly put them in a position to succeed.
He doesn’t think everything the Nets did this off-season makes sense for the future, particularly the trade of Nic Claxton for Julius Randle plus an exchange of picks.
The Julius Randle addition makes no sense. He’s an expensive floor-raiser in his 30s. The Nets don’t need their floor raised. They don’t control their own pick this year, so the relegation zone isn’t a concern. He overlaps positionally with Porter Jr. (whom they have neither traded nor extended, strangely). He’ll take the ball out of the hands of their many young players who need it.
There was no reason for them to give mutual options to Mo Wagner and Keon Ellis. They had more than enough cap space to just pay them more and get team options. Why didn’t they use their surplus cap space to try to steal a restricted free agent? This offseason made little sense. The strategy here is unclear. The Nets have gotten far more right than they’re credited for, but they’ll have to chart a clearer course moving forward if they want to make it into the top half of these rankings.
Quinn puts the Nets between the Pistons and Clippers in his rankings. He has the OKC Thunder at No. 1 and the NBA champions Knicks at No. 2.
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Noh takes a bit of a different tack, looking out at the 2029 season specifically. He notes that three years can make a big difference in the NBA, that back in 2023, the Pistons, Thunder and Spurs were bottom dwellers. Not anymore.
[T]he Pistons were the worst team in basketball, losing an NBA-record 28 straight games. Victor Wembanyama won Rookie of the Year honors, but the Spurs still looked far away from competing with a 22-60 record.
He also points out that the Celtics, Mavericks and Suns looked like dynasties in the making. Not happening either.
Noh starts by giving Brooklyn an A+ for assets, then provides an analysis then suggests that the organization ranks No. 21, depending on how aggressively they want to move in the intervening years.
The Nets have one of the best asset situations in the league. They have five surplus first-round picks to work with, some of which have immense value. That gives them the means to accelerate their rebuild if they want to.
They will probably still be a few years away from pulling that lever. They still won’t be in contention by 2029, but they should be on their way up as a playoff hopeful and have at least one point guard in the future between Brown, Demin and Traore.
Although Noh doesn’t mention it, the Nets draft assets, following their various trades for picks, will peak in 2028 and 2029, barring trades. In 2028, they have two firsts — their own and the 76ers, protected 1-8 — as well as two first round swaps from the Knicks and Suns plus three second rounders from the Grizzlies and Hawks as well as their own. Then, the next year they could wind with a big haul — three firsts: their own, the Knicks unprotected and the least favorable of the Mavericks, Phoenix and Rockets plus four seconds: their own plus the Mavericks, Warriors and the Grizzlies.
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The question, of course, with both Quinn and Noh’s analysis, is what they can and will do starting with this year’s trade deadline come February. There are hints that things will be interesting starting then.
Like Quinn, Noh projects the Thunder and Spurs as the two of the best organizations going forward. And why not?
Any positives at this point have to be noted and spotlighted, considering that the organization is not just “embarrassed” by the recent turn of events but become the butt of an endless series of jokes, the most recent coming from Knicks superfan and Oscar-nominated actor Timothee Chalamet, who appearing on FanDuel Thursday got personal…
Maybe Egor Demin who recently put up shots with Chalamet at his private gym, can talk some sense to him. Aura respects aura, you know.
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