The 20-62 Nets received a booby prize with the sixth pick in the NBA Lottery. The result? What this team needs is unlikely to be found in Draft picks.
They wasted another season away by fielding a bad team and losing games … just for that outcome? To think, they tied the Washington Wizards and Indiana Pacers for the best odds to win the lottery (14.0 percent) or land a highly coveted top-3 pick (40.1 percent). Then ….
Yes, it was a bad day for the Nets. Even having the No. 2 pick wasn’t going to soothe anything. Getting the sixth pick is as depressing as getting the eighth pick last year.
Photo courtesy NY Post
Nets general manager Sean Marks put on a word salad about his thoughts on the Nets losing the lottery after it was over. But what was there to say?
The Nets needed to draft a transformational player, not another project or reach after drafting Egor Demin as the No. 8 overall pick last year. BYU’s AJ Dybantsa was the best player in the Draft. Instead, the Wizards likely will draft him after getting the No. 1 pick.
The Nets can only hope that somehow and someway they get the second-best player in the draft, injury-prone Darryn Peterson. But that won’t happen, either. Risk-taker Jazz basketball boss Danny Ainge won’t bypass Peterson with the team’s No. 2 pick.
Don’t tell me about the Nets and this year’s deep draft. Does anyone seriously think Marks will finally get it right? He has a history of not getting anything right.
There’s no way Marks can make a good draft choice here, and there’s no reason to waste another season of tanking. With NBA commissioner Adam Silver likely changing the draft lottery with the “3-2-1 proposal” of adding 16 teams and only getting two lottery balls for being this bad, the Nets need to go in another direction.
So, what should Marks do? I recommend trading the No. 6 pick for a proven NBA player who can lead the way. There are NBA teams that would be desperate to get the Nets’ pick, and the Nets need a proven player who can bring his star to them. Who might that be? My list includes Jaylen Brown, Joel Embiid, Devin Booker, Jamal Murray, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Those guys can elevate a troubled team fast. They can make this franchise respectable again, just like Jason Kidd did when the New Jersey Nets acquired him for the petulant loser Stephon Marbury in the summer of 2001.
Beware, though. You can have a great idea that gets executed poorly. Consider when then-Nets general manager Billy King traded the No. 3 overall pick, Derrick Favors, for then-Jazz point guard Deron Williams. Unfortunately, the move backfired. Williams behaved like a jerk during his time with the Nets, and the team didn’t win a thing.
That said, I don’t see another alternative for Marks. This is what he needs to do, and his job tenure likely depends on how well it turns out.
