With 13 tradeable first-round picks, 17 tradeable second-round picks and $91.8 million in projected practical cap space, the Nets are in position to do just about whatever they want this summer.
And if the right opportunity presents itself, general manager Sean Marks is prepared to go “all in”.
“The summer is when we do our work,” Marks said. “And that goes across the board for the whole organization, the front office does its work for the draft and free agency and so forth, and roster building. But also, players, player development, player and coach development; those relationships start in the offseason.”
Brooklyn ranked 26th in NET rating, 28th in offensive rating and 23rd in defensive rating last season, finishing 26-56, the sixth-worst record in the league. The franchise now awaits its full draft positioning, which will be revealed during the draft lottery in Chicago on May 12.
The Nets’ own first-round pick has a 37.2% chance of landing in the Top 4 and a 9% chance of rising to No.1 overall. Their first-round pick via Milwaukee could land anywhere from 18-20, determined by coin-flips. And their other first-round selections via Knicks and Houston are locked in at No. 26 and No. 27, respectively.
Speaking to reporters during Monday’s exit interviews in Brooklyn, Marks was asked about his sales pitch to potential free agents. He didn’t answer the question completely but said any pitch starts with head coach Jordi Fernandez, who enters his first full summer with the team after missing time last summer while coaching Team Canada in the Olympics.
“It’s a competitive environment out there,” Marks said. “Every day at practice, every shootaround Jordi is expecting and demanding the most from you, and nobody leaves that game, practice, shootaround going, ‘I’m not sure where I stand.’ I think that’s super important for us. The market speaks for itself, right? Our ownership group speaks for itself. So, we’re very fortunate to be able to go all in at the right time. We’ve done it before. We’ve done it several times. Would we do it again? I think Joe [Tsai] is sitting there going at the right time, you give me the word, and we’ll go.”
The Nets enter the offseason with an opportunistic mindset, afforded by the financial flexibility they maintained throughout the season and a plethora of assets. They can build through the draft. They can chase stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo, should they become available. Or they can do both. Instead of being reactive to the free agent market, they’ve set themselves up to control it.
“In this market we’re always going to have various different free agents and opportunities thrown at us, just simply being in a top five market in the league; that’s going to happen,” Marks said. “We don’t want to get sped up. We’ve talked multiple times about being systematic and strategic in how we build here.
“There’s a lot of cap room at stake. And how we use that, it’s probably too early to determine. But there’s a variety of different pathways we can go on. And it’s just about being opportunistic as to how we build and when we go all in again, so to speak. And that could be going all in with whether it’s free agents or trades, but it also could be go all-in with systematically growing some homegrown talent. And we’ve done that in the past and grown some guys here, developed some guys here as well and attracted top tier talent from elsewhere.”
