On Friday, the Nets will receive a tough reminder when they travel to Dallas.
It doesn’t matter how much a team wants to tank during the season; there is no guarantee that a team will win the draft lottery, or that another team that did not tank won’t be victorious.
The Mavericks were the most recent example.
While the Nets, Jazz, Wizards and Hornets all purposefully tanked last season, and the latter three had the best odds to win, the pingpong balls chose Dallas. They didn’t aim to tank yet still won the lottery with the 12th-worst record of the season.
It was a complete shocker for a team that traded away the face of its franchise, Luka Dončić. However, that’s how the cookie crumbled and it could go that way again this year.
As of Tuesday morning, the Nets have fallen to sixth in the lottery odds and are four games behind the Pelicans for the top spot after winning three of their last four games.
There is no guarantee that they will be picking at the top of the draft in June. This means, no matter the result, the Nets still have to draft and develop their young players well for any hope of a franchise turnaround.
“The only thing we care about is the process,” Jordi Fernández said after practice on Tuesday.
The coach is the prime messenger of this mission and has been tasked to make the Nets’ five rookies into key future pieces.
All of the rookies have played in Long Island except No. 8 overall pick Egor Dëmin. They have flowed between the two teams, and both Drake Powell and Ben Saraf were sent to Long Island on Monday. While it seems counterproductive to their development plan with the future of the franchise in mind, Fernández said the communication and expectations remain the same.
“Whatever the plan is for them, that’s what we want to see from them when they play with our club,” Fernández said. “For example, if I’m asking Ben to set up pick and rolls better and stay away from inefficient pull-up 3s, I don’t want him to do it there and I don’t want him to do it here. But then he needs to know where a good three is at all times. That goes for everybody. Same with the defense.”
“There are no emotional decisions here,” he added. “We have a schedule for these guys based on if they’re accomplishing certain things and what the team needs here to compete.”
Fernández’s goal is to have the rookies play between 50 and 70 games this year and get as many reps as possible. Through their NBA trials, all of them have improved in production.
Against the Pelicans on Saturday, Danny Wolf had seven points, four rebounds and two assists while Dëmin added seven assists and Saraf tallied seven points and four assists. Powell also had a big game against the Hornets, scoring 10 points and racking up four assists and three steals.
Wolf, who was called up when Michael Porter Jr. went down with a back injury for two games, has proved himself to stay in Brooklyn over the past six games after only three NBA showings prior. He is averaging 11.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game on 45 percent shooting across an average of 22.3 minutes in that span.
“Coaching staff and front office have made it very clear that they want us to get as many reps as possible, wherever that may be,” Wolf said. “When I was in Long Island, I just started taking advantage of it and when I got my opportunity here, I just tried taking it and running with it. And no matter where I’m at, I’m just going to keep working on my game.”
While seeing No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg on the court will have the Nets wondering what could have been, the development of the players in-house matters for the long-term plan. That’s guaranteed.
