At the moment, deep in a tank, the Brooklyn Nets do not look like someplace that Giannis Antetokounmpo would be interested in. He wants to win and win now and the Nets roster does not scream (or even whisper) contender. The rookies look good. Noah Clowney’s success no longer should be considered a small sample and Michael Porter Jr. seems rejuvenated and is only 27. Not to mention they have Jordi Fernandez, a legitimately good young coach who NBA vets have called a “genius.”
Moreover, it would appear that the New York Knicks have the inside track on the two-time MVP and 2021 NBA champion and Finals MVP. After all, the Bucks granted the Knicks exclusive rights to talk trade last July.
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Still…
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Only one team has more than 30 draft picks: 13 firsts , all but one unprotected, plus two first round swaps (also unprotected) as well as 19 seconds;
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Only one team has 10 tradeable first round picks. All 19 seconds are also tradeable.
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Only one team has cap space — roughly $15.5 million — going into trade season which begins December 15. That same team is likely to have $40 million in space come July.
That team, of course, is your Brooklyn Nets and when teams, particularly small market teams, trade a superstar, they want a plethora of draft picks and good young players in return. They also usually prefer a clean deal, one involving the fewest teams possible.
In addition to not knowing the star’s interest in the Nets, we don’t know the Nets’ interest in the star. But as Brian Lewis reminds us Thursday morning, the Nets rebuild isn’t just about securing picks and building up cap space. It’s about finding the star to cement it all.
“If you’re going after max-level talent, they have (to) automatically and absolutely change the trajectory of your team,” Sean Marks said. “This can’t be like, ‘Let’s go get this [guy] and lock ourselves into being a six or seven seed.’ When we go all in, you’re going in to compete at the highest level and contend.”
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The quote is from last April’s end-of-season press conference and although it may be old, it doesn’t appear to be perishable. All the Nets moves, taking five first rounders, using salary dumps to acquire veterans as well as future picks and letting Fernandez coach and coach and coach, enhances the notion that finding a superstar remains part of the rebuild.
And Giannis Antetokounmpo certainly qualifies as “max level talent” and as Lewis also reminds us, the Nets have long had interest in him going back to when they thought he could be the Batman to Mikal Bridges Robin.
Yes, yes, the Nets chose to tank, but Sean Marks & co. would prefer to call their strategy “flexibility” and will all the assets listed above, it wouldn’t take much to get on board the Giannis train along with 28 other teams.
Would it be enough? Is the timing good? Sam Quinn of CBS Sports in breaking down possibilities for Giannis’ final destination thinks the Nets will continue to be rumored among the top candidates but believes as well that the Nets don’t (yet) have the goods to entice the Bucks ownership and management to make the deal. Moreover, he noted that the Nets would have to give up assets including young players to make any package acceptable to Milwaukee while making the Nets less attractive to Giannis.
Antetokounmpo has been linked to them for so long because they have two things: assets and the right market. The idea would be to land Antetokounmpo, use the remainder of your trade assets on another star and go from there. If this supporting cast had meaningfully developed any youth, that would be tempting. But the truth here is, this team isn’t two stars away. There are still too many questions about the supporting cast, especially since so much of the meager incumbent talent would presumably be traded. If the Nets had drafted a star last year or done a better job of cultivating longer-term, starter-level depth, this would be a conversation. The timing just isn’t right here.
Those are the known unknowables. There are also the unknown unknowables on both sides. Does Giannis look at the Nets record with stars and superstars and wonder why James Harden, Kyrie Irving and James Harden asked out and Mikal Bridges desperately wanted out? Will the Nets international bent carry any weight with the Nigerian Greek with Chinese business interests? Is Joe Tsai so enamored of the team’s success in finding good young talent from Noah Clowney to Danny Wolf and building up that draft cache that he wants to stay the course? Just last week in advising young Hong King entrepreneurs, Tsai said that he believes the key to success in any business — the “secret sauce” — is building organically.
He added that “of course, we’ve made some acquisitions, some of them successful but some have failed … spectacularly. Always favor organic development.” While he was talking about Alibaba, the same could certainly apply to his experience with the Nets.
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Reports Wednesday night indicated that Team Giannis final choice may not be limited to the Knicks, that he’ll consider all comers. As we said in the MeloDrama and the Dwightmare, parts I through VIII, stay tuned.
