Rest assured, there will be no shortage of discussion about all the wrong turns the Brooklyn Nets have taken over the past few years to end up where they are. The only thing that matters now is how they move forward. Sean Marks' first order of business will be finding a new head coach, and CBS Sports' Bill Reiter has confirmed the multiple reports that it will likely be Ime Udoka who replaces Steve Nash.
Apparently Kyrie Irving isn't providing enough controversy on his own for the Nets. They want to add more to their PR plate with a coach who was just suspended for the season by the Celtics for his shady workplace behavior. Obviously Marks thinks Udoka will prove to be worth the headache. He thought the same of Irving.
Perhaps it's time for Marks to stop trying to save a house that's engulfed in flames, and just let it burn. First, scrap the plan to hire Udoka. Next, get rid of Irving, either by trading him for the pennies he's currently worth or by simply sending him home. Call the Lakers and tell them you'll take Russell Westbrook and just one of their future picks, whichever they choose, perhaps even with protections, and put Irving on the first jet to LAX.
After that, trade Kevin Durant, who never wanted to come back to this team in the first place. You can get a little greedy here, as K.D. is your one All-Star asset with value that is actually commensurate with his talent, but get it done. Take the haul of draft picks he can bring back to replace the ones you gave to Houston in the James Harden deal, and get on with the rebuild.
Since we're on the topic of those picks the Nets owe Houston, here's an important point: the 2023 pick is a swap, meaning the Nets could, in theory, tank the rest of this season and the worst 2023 draft slot they could end up with is Houston's.
Example: Just for the sake of argument, let's say the Nets go into full tank mode, win the lottery, and end up with the draft's No. 1 pick. Houston will take that pick from them, and the Nets will get Houston's slot, which is a good bet to end up at the upper end of the lottery as well. Either that, or the Rockets end up with a higher pick and the Nets keep their pick, wherever it falls.
For the Nets, this won't be a viable opportunity for long. They owe their pick outright to the Rockets in 2024. It's not a swap. In other words, if the Nets put off their rebuild until next year, when Irving will almost certainly be gone and there's probably a decent chance Durant reissues his trade request, they won't have anything to gain from losing. They could go 0-82, land the first pick and it goes to Houston. Sorry. That's the deal you made.
In theory, Brooklyn could play the tank strategy in 2025, when their deal with Houston is also a swap, but here's the problem with that: The Rockets owe their 2024 and 2026 first-round picks to Oklahoma City for Westbrook, meaning this is the last season Houston is incentivized to be bad for a while. If Brooklyn waits until 2024-25 to tank, there's a chance, perhaps a good one, that their pick ends up better than Houston's, in which case they would lose it via the swap.
Again, all of this minutiae is to say, if the Nets want to move on from this mess and start their next phase of roster building, this is arguably their best time do so. They won't get Victor Wembanyama (if they somehow were to land the No. 1 pick Houston would initiate the swap and take it), but the 2023 draft class is loaded. There's plenty beyond Wembanyama to be excited about.
Chances are, the Nets are not going to go this route. It wouldn't make much sense to hire Udoka, and deal with all the baggage he brings, just to trade everyone and start losing, and indeed, if the trade-everyone-and-tank argument I just laid out is at least worth considering, so too is the argument to keep this thing together. Kevin Durants don't grow on trees, and for as poorly as they have played, this is an extremely talented Nets roster. Maybe, just maybe, Udoka reels it all in.
But if not, and the Nets make their run this season only to end up losing in the first or second round before drafting in the 20s, they will have potentially missed their last chance for a while to kickstart a rebuild with a high-leverage lottery asset in their hands. It's a risk either way. It's not the situation in which the Nets envisioned being when they lured Irving and Durant in the first place. But it's where they're at now. How they got here doesn't matter. All that matters is where they go next.
