Kaplan’s Note: This article was written by Net Income. We’re still working out the kinks as we transition from Chorus to WordPress publishing, so in the meantime, NI will be using me, Lucas Kaplan, as a medium.
It’s about as certain as anything in the NBA this coming season: the Brooklyn Nets are going for broke. No, they’re not pulling out the stops to win. They are trying to go broke, lose as many games so they can wind up with one of three can’t-miss prospects, each seen as the equal if not a better version of Cooper Flagg. The 2026 Draft may very well be better (if not as deep) than 2025,
Tanking is for fans another chance to, literally, hit the lottery. Social media is filled with hopes that the Nets will tank “properly” this time around, unlike last year when they argue the Nets won too many games and wound up with the eighth pick and Egor Demin. Never mind that since the league instituted new rules in 2019 no team with the worst record has won the overall No. 1 nor that the last two years, the overall No. 1 has gone to a team that made the play-in.
Maybe with three superstar prospects, tanking will be more productive. Whatever.
On Wednesday, the New York Post’s Brian Lewis offered another view of purposeful losing: the effect on young players, particularly rookies. Losing can drain teenagers of their optimism and even hurt development, thus ruining the culture.
There is a stark difference between losing and tanking, and the Nets will be doing the latter, having torn the roster down to the studs in an attempt to rebuild it.
It’s a gamble — and a dangerous one.
“You just exist on a spreadsheet,” one highly regarded agent told The Post.
If the Nets are going to lose all these games, they better get a payoff, because the cost can linger for years in the locker room.
That same agent points to what happened in Philadelphia a decade ago when then-GM Sam Hinkie raised tanking to an art form — the vaunted Process, angering the league and other GMs. No one is suggesting the Nets are going to out-Hinkie Hinkie, but Lewis quotes an agent saying that tanking can harm the very culture you’re trying to create. The toxicity can linger and fester.
“A lot of these teams that try to bottom out by tanking like Brooklyn is doing, they think there’s no consequences,” an agent told the Post. “You risk eroding the environment you’re trying to create. That’s what happened in Philadelphia.”
Lewis also quotes Jelani McCoy, the former NBA big man who now has his own podcast on the subject of tanking’s long term effect. McCoy thinks that the issues with the Sixers even now is the result of Hinkie’s “Process.”
“Sam Hinkie started the dogheading … just follow my lead and we’re going to do this tanking shit and get you a Ben Simmons and Jahlil Okafor and build us a contender based off dogheading,” McCoy said on his “Forgotten Seasons” podcast discussing the extended tanking and the impact it has had, “This is why they’re over there acting a damn fool now. Silly s**t only begat silly s**t.”
(Kaplan’s note: From Ben Simmons’ rookie year to the present — even after a disastrous 2024-25, choosing Tobias Harris over Jimmy Butler, the Kawhi Shot, the disintegration to dust of Embiid’s knees and Simmons’ back — the Sixers are fifth in the NBA in wins.)
The effect on the Nets rookies, who are in the formative first days of their careers, could be tough. They have all been winners in their short careers and the loss of confidence that comes with losing is a danger. There were times last season that Head Coach Jordi Fernandez, seemed frustrated with loss after loss after loss.
“You hire a coach who is all about development and culture, and Jordi [Fernández] — bless his heart — really is about all of those things. But what is he really coaching for? Who is he developing and what are they playing for?” Lewis quoted one league source who like the others wished to remain anonymous.” “And you’re not in Memphis or Sacramento. You’re in New York City. It’s a big-time city and you’re [tanking].”
There is also the danger that if this rebuild doesn’t work or work well that the losing will become endemic. the rebuild extended beyond two or three years, the franchise and its culture becoming decidedly unattractive to the stars they hope to attract.
Lewis points to other franchises where nothing seemed to work for years.
The Kings endured a stretch that saw them get 10 consecutive top-10 picks from 2009-18 without a single winning season. Charlotte had top-10 picks in 10 out of 12 years from 2004-15 and didn’t muster a playoff win until 2016. And the woebegone Wizards got top-10 picks in six of their past seven drafts, but still are expected to jostle with the Nets this season for the worst mark in the league.
In other words, nothing is guaranteed. As Lewis notes, Finishing with the worst, second-worst or third-worst record would only give the Nets 40.1% chance of landing AJ Dybantsa, the BYU wing, Cam Boozer the Duke power forward or Darryn Peterson, the Kansas combo guard. The last two seasons, the team that made the play-in — the Atlanta Hawks in 2024 and the Dallas Mavericks in 2025 — got the overall No. 1.
Risk, of course, is at the heart of any rebuild. How much can you manage is the issue.
https://nypost.com/2025/08/06/sports/what-nets-risk-in-trying-to-tank-to-brighter-future/