When Nets coach Jacque Vaughn welcomes his players for training camp beginning on Oct. 3, for the first time in years, they’ll be bracing for a season without a superstar.
That means facing a campaign without championship contention. But that doesn’t make it a lost season.
They’re not rebuilding. They’re resetting.
The departures of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in February may have shut the championship window, but it doesn’t mean the Nets would or should go pursuing the likes of Damian Lillard.
General manager Sean Marks has pivoted and given the Nets flexibility and one of the best stockpiles of assets in the league.
Don’t expect him to give it away anytime soon. Or cheaply.
Not for Lillard. Or for Tyler Herro. Or for James Harden (been there, done that).
The Nets don’t have title hopes — at least not realistic ones as of today. What they have is plenty of powder. Expect them to keep it dry for the next time a franchise player in his prime becomes available, be that at this upcoming season’s trade deadline or next summer.
A player such as Giannis Antetokounmpo. Or Donovan Mitchell. Or Joel Embiid. Or Luka Doncic. A star who could transform their team.
“I think I’d love to say, ‘Hey, we need this shooting and we need this defense and this size’ and so forth. I don’t think we can get it all at once,” Marks said this summer. “This is one of those years where you look at it and you say, ‘Who is going to be here in two or three years from this group? What’s it going to look like?’ We’re going to give them an opportunity.
“It’s going to be fun to see how these guys develop. We’re never a finished product. Even when we had our Big 3 a couple of years ago, we weren’t finished then. We were constantly looking to see who we could add, whether it’s the shooting or right now we’ve added obviously some defensive wings and so forth. Let’s see where this goes all the way up until the trade deadline as to what this team looks like at the end of the day.”
Covering their assets
After trading Irving to Dallas and moving Durant to Phoenix days later, the Nets now have seven tradable first-round picks through 2030 and four more that could be subject to swaps.
That includes a combined three unprotected firsts from the Suns (2027, 2029) and Mavericks (2029) that could become highly valuable as the Suns’ core ages or the Mavericks lose Doncic or Irving or both. Essentially Marks is shorting the Suns and Mavs.
According to an exhaustive analysis by CBS Sports ranking all 56 future NBA first-round picks that have been traded, the Nets control four of the six most valuable picks on the list: the Suns’ 2029 pick (No. 1), the Mavs’ 2029 pick (No. 3), the Suns’ 2027 pick (No. 5) and the Suns’ 2028 pick (No. 6, via swap rights). The analysis concluded the Nets and Spurs have the highest-quality draft assets in the NBA (Bleacher Report ranked the Nets’ collection of draft assets as fifth-best).
It should be noted the new collective bargaining agreement — adding the highly punitive second apron to the daunting repeater tax — makes trading for superstars more difficult and makes first-round picks far more valuable than ever. Think of them as anti-NFTs.
It’s distinctly possible the Nets’ trade of Durant — coming after the Jazz’s trades of Mitchell to Cleveland and Rudy Gobert to Minnesota — may end up including the last mega-haul the NBA sees for a while.
Note the comparatively cheap price Bradley Beal fetched for the Wizards and the reportedly unimpressive non-Heat offers the Trail Blazers have been receiving for Lillard.
Combine the Nets’ draft assets with a mid-20s core led by Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson — both locked up long-term on team-friendly contracts — and the Nets could be in position to pounce if the right star becomes available a year from now.
But only if they play their cards right — and patiently — in this reset.
“We have to keep our flexibility,” Marks said. “We’re looking forward not only this year and next year, [but] the year after that, and trying to find players that will be with us in two or three years. What does it look like?
“[Our core] are mid-20s, some younger than that, so this is something that what can they show us in this next season that proves they should be part of this group in the next year or two after this. And as the group evolves and their game evolves, too, we can sort of grow together.”
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Is timing right for Giannis, Mitchell?
If the Nets are intent on not opening the treasure chest for Lillard (too old for their timeline) or Herro (too expensive for a player who doesn’t make them a contender), then for whom?
Antetokounmpo — who can become a free agent in 2025 — put the league on alert when he told The New York Times he’s not sure about signing an extension in Milwaukee this summer or even next summer. He followed up by making it clear he’s no longer adamant about staying with the Bucks.
“I’m a Milwaukee Buck, but most importantly I’m a winner,” Antetokounmpo said on the “48 Minutes” podcast. “If there is a better situation for me to win the Larry O’Brien, I have to take that better situation.”
Despite having become eligible to ink a three-year, $173 million extension on Friday, few expect him to sign now if only because waiting a year is simply better business.
But what if the Bucks don’t extend guard Jrue Holiday when he’s eligible on Feb. 22? It’ll make for an interesting summer of 2024.
If Antetokounmpo doesn’t sign an extension next summer (be it opting in for 2025-26 and inking for three more years, or opting out and signing for four), the Nets will be watching closely. According to ESPN, the Knicks, Warriors, Pelicans and Raptors are also expected to be monitoring the situation.
Then there is Cleveland’s Mitchell, who at 27 years old, fits the Nets perfectly. A native of Elmsford who played his AAU ball in the city, Mitchell’s father has been the Mets’ senior director of player relations for decades. When the Jazz were looking to trade him, the Nets were on his list — along with the Knicks and Heat.
Like Antetokounmpo, Mitchell can ink an extension next month. And like the Greek Freak, few expect Mitchell to do so.
After having traded three first-round picks, two more swaps and three players — including Most Improved Player winner Lauri Markkanen — to acquire Mitchell, if the Cavaliers fear they can’t keep him, could they move him during the season, as has been suggested?
Though the old CBA prevented the Nets from dealing for Mitchell last offseason (because they had traded for Ben Simmons months earlier, and both are on designated rookie supermax contracts), the restriction barring multiple Rose Rule players acquired via trade has been lifted in the new CBA.
There are even less likely scenarios, such as the Harden melodrama prompting Embiid to force his way out of Philadelphia, Doncic losing faith in Dallas or some other star who has kept his disgruntlement hidden — except from the NBA front office spies who are purveyors of such information.
Meanwhile, a Nets team that has gone from title-or-bust pressure to the look of a play-in team can use this season to reset.
The current ceiling
Nic Claxton, 24, will be playing for a big payday. Cam Thomas, 21, is seeking a breakthrough.
Nineteen-year-old rookies Dariq Whitehead and Noah Clowney will try to prove they belong in Brooklyn, not G League Long Island.
And Vaughn — who replaced Steve Nash during last season — gets his first camp.
“I don’t know if I look at [the East] and say, ‘Hey, it’s wide open.’ I look at it and say what an opportunity,” Marks said. “This group has something to prove. They all have something to prove. Everybody here is going to be fighting for contracts and so forth and substantiality in the league.
“To me, it’s do they fall to the five seed? Do they fall to the eight seed? To the sixth seed? To the two seed? I have no idea.
“But I never want to limit any of these guys. It reminds me of a team we had a few years ago. It’s certainly a talented group of young men, and it’ll be fun to see how the team chemistry evolves over time because that’ll dictate a lot. Talent’s one thing, but how does a team play together and how quickly can they come together? This will be the first training camp that JV’s had with this group, so to me, we’ll know more after that for how quickly can they gel.”
And exactly what kind of cards Marks has been dealt in this reset.
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