PORTLAND — If the NBA ever starts tanking investigations, a night like Tuesday should give Brooklyn blanket immunity.
In a game against their closest lottery rival, the Nets not only got back injured regulars Cam Johnson and D’Angelo Russell but led wire-to-wire in a comprehensive 132-114 rout of the Trail Blazers.
Their tank-happy fans will almost certainly deride the victory as Pyrrhic. But for the Nets themselves, they’ll call it a sweet one.
Brooklyn (14-26) snapped a five-game losing skid, and did it behind a fairly complete team effort.
Their passing carved up the Portland defense for 36 assists (a season-high) — nearly double the Blazers’ 20 — and just 13 turnovers.
The 132 points and 54.4 percent shooting were also season highs for regulation, as were their 29 fast break points.
Johnson poured in 24 points in his first game since Jan. 2 in Milwaukee — coincidentally their last victory before Tuesday.
Ben Simmons flirted with a double-double (game-high 11 assists and nine rebounds).
And in the end, they never trailed, led by as much as 16 and cruised to victory.
It should be noted the win moved the Nets a half-game ahead of Portland in the standings — or more accurately, dropped them from sixth to seven in the lottery standings.
But the lottery is capricious.
It’s part of the reason Brooklyn GM Sean Marks has collected not just the NBA’s biggest horde of draft picks (31) but also the league’s largest cache of cap space ($65 million).
The more avenues to build — the more bites at the proverbial apple — the better.
But a team has to weigh the potential of a pick, the worth of every prospect.
And it must measure the benefit of the experience its young players get in a tank against the damage that all those inevitable losses can inflict.
Draft picks are no guarantee.
Brooklyn’s Ziaire Williams — who had 13 points on 3-for-4 shooting from deep — had been a former lottery pick given up on by Memphis as a salary dump.
The Nets picked up another ex-lottery pick, Killian Hayes, this summer who is laboring in the G-League.
That’s why the more bites at the apple, the better.
The Nets have an NBA-high total of 15 future first-round picks, four this June.
The odds are tilted in their favor.
But they’re still just that — odds.
NBA fans have seen better odds come up craps.
Remember the 2009 Timberwolves and their Portland-bred GM David Khan?
Minnesota had four first-rounders, including picks No. 5 and 6, and passed on Steph Curry not once but twice.
They picked Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn, Kahn reportedly telling staff they were similar to Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe. Curry went seventh, DeMar DeRozan ninth and Jrue Holiday 17th.
It’s Marks’ task to avoid becoming Khan.
The future picks will help, as will the cap space.
But with the Nets tanking as they enter a youth movement, it’s important to keep building a positive culture, one that keeps all the inevitable defeats from hurting the young players’ development.
It’s important to have nights like Tuesday.
“You’ve got to control what you can control and just continue to push, continue to get better,” Johnson said. “Everybody wants to win and everybody wants to compete. That’s what we’re going to keep doing. Just striving for that next one, trying to get that next one and growing in the process.”
The Nets used a 19-3 run that spanned the first and second quarters to blow it open.
Brooklyn opened the second quarter with six unanswered points to take a 46-30 lead, and never got challenged from there.
The Nets offense was white-hot behind Simmons and Russell, who came off the bench with 13 points and nine assists.
And when Scoot Henderson (game-high 39 points) and Shaedon Sharpe helped the Blazers pull within 66-63 on the latter’s layup early in the third, Brooklyn padded it back to a dozen.
