Will the Brooklyn Nets FINALLY learn their lesson?

 The Brooklyn Net front office is at it again! They just cannot learn from their mistakes. According to reports, Brooklyn’s “A-Plan” this offseason is to pursue Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo.

In a hypothetical deal with the Bucks, Brooklyn would need to use a combination of picks collected from the Mikal Bridges, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant trades to entice Milwaukee to trade away the face of the franchise. But there’s also a great deal of the cap gymnastics that would accompany the picks to get a deal done.

Cam Johnson almost certainly would be the center piece salary wise in an Antetokounmpo trade, but that’s where the Nets big salary ends, unless Nic Claxton is also included. If not Claxton, a potential sign-and-trade with D’Angelo Russell could get the job done. If Russell is the addition to Johnson in the trade instead of Claxton, another current Net would also have to be including to match the salaries. Got all that? Good.

Brooklyn will have the most amount of cap room in the upcoming offseason and hopefully a top three pick along with it (which Milwaukee might ask for if they are dealing Giannis away), but Brooklyn is far from being a Giannis Antetokounmpo away from being a playoff contender let alone a championship contender. They also don’t have enough assets to make a secondary trade to pair a second star with Giannis. They barely have enough to trade for Antetokounmpo in the first place.

With the potential free agent crop—this summer isn’t a summer where the top end free agents are the type you’d break the bank for. LeBron James will rework his deal to stay in L.A. with Luka Doncic. It is unlikely that Kyrie Irving or James Harden will have a reunion with the same front office that ship them out less than two years ago. Plus, Irving is in the midst of recovering from an ACL injury.

After those three players the type of talent drops off significantly. Julius Randle, Kris Middleton, John Collins, and Brook Lopez are all good players but not players worthy of being the second banana on a championship level team. The group after that, is full of bench guys that would be good to have but Brooklyn would not have enough money to sign enough of them to have Antetokounmpo be the sole star on the team.

So, while it would be fun for a week or two to have the Nets win the back pages and have a brief lap around the news cycle, if Sean Marks wants to be serious about his latest rebuild—he will steer clear a blockbuster trade. For the simple fact that if he actually does pull off a trade of that magnitude, he will look around his office like Will Smith at the end of Fresh Prince because there will be nothing left.

If Marks would like a model to follow to save his job, why wouldn’t he just look out west and try to reciprocate what Oklahoma City did with the Paul George and Russell Westbrook deals? There is no Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on roster right now, but hoarding picks, drafting well, having a good head coach, and cultivating a young core that likes playing with each other is how you get it done when you’re not a desired destination in the free agent market.

Marks will have four first round picks in the July draft—why not try to nail this draft and realize all the fruits of the most recent fire sale? Why would the front office want to jump back into the deep end of the pool with no safety net for a third team in the past 12 years?

Joe Tsai could be pushing for this behind the scenes, I understand his want to be relevant again given that Tsai is still relatively new to basketball ownership and taking into account the work he’s done with his wife to bring a championship to the Barclays Center thanks to the New York Liberty.

At the same time what I would say to Joe Tsai is to have patience and trust the coaching staff that has been hired to fix the basketball purgatory that the Barclays Center from the NBA side since moving to Brooklyn. Yes, there was the second COVID season when the “Nets World Order” played 16 games together and lost in the second round, funny enough against Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks, but the arena was only half filled due to New York Pandemic regulations.

The team now is difficult to follow because throughout this season the front office dealt players away in an effort to lose as many games as possible. But those who have remained play extremely hard, and they look like they want to be here. There looks to be the beginnings of a culture change. Keeping some of the players currently on the roster will help the potential four incoming rookies this coming fall.

In a season that has been painful on the fanbase a good draft is somewhat of a consolation prize for what they’ve had to endure. The least the organization can do is to try to give the fans that. After all, the draft is what the front office has prioritized since before the season and all the messaging to the fanbase was to get excited about ping pong balls. Play it out through the draft and see what happens. We’ve already seen what happens when Brooklyn mortgages its future twice and both times it hasn’t worked out.