I left Barclays Center sometime late in the second round of the 2024 NBA Draft. Exhausted on a hot summer night, I walked slowly onto an old-school LIRR train. You know, those smelly one with the torn red and blue cushions. As I looked around for a seat, a young fan saw my Draft lanyard and flaunted his makeshift Brooklyn Nets jersey that read “FLAGG” taped over “DURANT”.
That was the moment it all hit.
We’ve got our first Cooper Flagg Nets jersey-tag sighting on the Long Island Railroad. pic.twitter.com/UTo9WpN6N0
— Anthony Puccio (@APOOCH) June 27, 2024
It wasn’t easy. It had its moments, but they were short-lived. And it’s probably best for everyone that we can look forward to May 12.
That goes for the fans, players, coaches, front office, and ownership. It was understood the Nets would not be winning basketball games entering the season. The expected protocol is egregious and shameless when you think about a rebuild — or “tank”.
... Now is the moment of truth.
The Nets were irrelevant and finished a strange season with a 26-56 record, the sixth-worst record in the NBA (or sixth-best odds) at the No.1 pick in the draft. In fact, it’s hard to think of a more irrelevant team this year. Wait. The Charlotte Hornets say hello.
To some, that isn’t bad enough to justify a tank and maybe they’re right.
The blueprint to greatness didn’t work and the blueprint to rebuilding isn’t guaranteed. The Thunder are the poster boys for such and Brooklyn can only pray they’re so lucky. But even the Thunder had really bad days — including a 73-point loss in 2021 that led their most dedicated fan, a young woman from Tokyo to declare a temporary respite.
Even the most innocent basketball fans struggle with tanking. Even though it meant sacrificing a season ... or two ... for the greater good.
In Brooklyn, we severely underestimated the professionalism of NBA players — who live with a chip on their shoulders — in buying into a coach and his system which led to positivity and effort. That alone feels like half the battle during an era of “load management.” The philosophy of tanking or rebuilding is a difficult and time-consuming effort for everyone involved.
That’s why this season was so confusing. The Nets accomplished what they also intended to do — lose games but establish an identity under head coach Jordi Fernandez. They did that, perhaps too much so early in the season when they were 9-10 following a three-game West Coast win streak. It had gone too far at that point and Marks pulled the plug, trading Dennis Schroder and Dorian Finney-Smith less than a month later.
It was confusing but it had to be done.
Jordi Fernandez: pic.twitter.com/WLxrairtGn
— Anthony Puccio (@APOOCH) November 26, 2024
The Nets ran into the clash between reality and what I personally hoped to see from them before the season. A tug of war between establishing a sustainable culture and the logical-yet-risky side of playing the NBA lottery game.
“This year is about establishing an identity and building a foundation with a handful of young players — starting with Cam Thomas and Nic Claxton. Lose and get a high pick. Play hard, compete, and garner respect so teams know a game in Brooklyn isn’t going to be an easy one, no matter what the standings say.”
It was and wasn’t shameless. There’s cautious optimism around Brooklyn as fans and pundits recognize its draft capital, financial flexibility, good coach, New York market, and plenty more.
Sean Marks says the Nets biggest selling point is “the guy sitting next to me,” pointing to Jordi Fernandez, our Lucas Kaplan wrote at Marks’ exit interview.
That and the New York market. No doubt about it. But if we’re going to call out the current era of basketball, including tanking, load management, etc., then we’d be naive to believe that any coach is safe in 2025. That does not pertain to Fernandez now nor anytime in the near future, it’s just to point out that the Nets and its fans should remain humble because it’s only the first year. We went down a similar road with Kenny Atkinson.
As the year went on, fans pondered: Is it better to have a good coach with players who might win enough games to make a play-in? Or is it better to have a team that gets blown out every night with a better chance at a top-3 pick?
Marks said himself in the exit interview that the Nets don’t want to acquire a player for the sake of being a six or seven seed. By that philosophy, there’s no sense in rooting for wins from an franchise that wasn’t planning on winning much to begin with.
As someone who covers the team, the offseason is refreshing. There were fun moments (DLo game-winner, Tyrese Martin vs. the Suns, etc.) but it felt dull for the most part. The team’s most exciting scorer Cam Thomas — in a contract year — played 25 games. Nic Claxton didn’t show much improvement from last year and his constant technical fouls were a sign of constant immaturity, the same year he signed a four-year, $97 million deal. Cam Johnson was the bright spot but some fans wanted him traded because of how he was impacting the tank!
There wasn’t much to get excited about, and if you did, then you were told not to. Sigh. There was a divide and a level of arrogance in how one side would tell the other how they should root for their team — a battle in Brooklyn between anti-tankers and pro-tankers. It was tiresome to say the least.
A good coach can only get you so excited when the team isn’t making the playoffs and benefits more from losing games. It’s a strategy that’s battered the NBA product in its biggest market.
We can nitpick at things in hindsight but what good is that? Fans on both sides will debate the success of this season — and the future — beyond the Draft Lottery on May 12 and the NBA Draft on June 25.
There are other things that go into this. I remind you this is a perspective piece. I host a podcast and I’m the Site Manager at this wonderful website. In an era filled with rising hostility towards media and journalists, scapegoated amid the social media era of misinformation, clickbait, and AI manipulation; journalism is more critical than ever.
These games aren’t always the easiest to cover but we take pride in offering the most comprehensive Brooklyn Nets coverage, with integrity, with quality over quantity. The reason I mention this is because the majority of the ND team have work obligations with other tireless jobs, yet everyone still shows up for every game and event… with class and with joy. Net Income, Lucas Kaplan and Collin Helwig covered all 82. It’s a love-hate thing, you know? Like the Nets, we hope for better days for journalists.
Patience is a virtue and the fate of this past season will be determined within the next few weeks and next two months.
While a ton rides on May 12, other things weigh heavily on the franchise future like how the NBA Playoffs shake out and which superstars might be on the move, specifically Giannis Antetokounmpo, reportedly Plan A. Know this: the Brooklyn Nets will not avoid a star of his caliber.
“If you’re going after max level talent, they’ve got to automatically and absolutely change the trajectory of your team,” said Marks.
There’s only a finite number of players who can change the trajectory of a team without dismantling whatever’s on the team, as it is now, 26 wins and all. Giannis is decidedly one of them — especially in a weak East.
If their alleged Plan A doesn’t work, then it’s more likely that Brooklyn takes on bad salaries and run it back with their new group of rookies. They did, after all, trade those Phoenix picks to Houston so they could retain their 2025 and 2026 picks. The 2026 Draft is loaded at the very top.
Brooklyn is in the driver’s seat to maneuver things however they’d like this offseason. If not, free agency is wide open in 2026.
Whatever it is, it’ll be better than this past season. Hopefully.
It’ll be the highest draft pick they’ve had since taking Derrick Favors third overall in 2009. They literally have not had a lottery pick since moving to Brooklyn. Making matters worse, the Nets were on the butt-end of every joke because of all the picks they’ve thrown around allowing other teams to become successful.
There’s no way of predicting how things will shake out, but there’s solace knowing that the real season starts now — and all that Nets fans endured this season will be rewarded in some capacity, which will allow everyone to move on and understand what to expect for the 2026 season.
It will include a top-10 draft pick. It might include a star. It might be another season of “ethical tanking.” Either way, we’ll all be here, anxiously waiting for better days in Brooklyn.
