Asked during a panel hosted by the All-In Podcast about his predictions for the Nets‘ this season, team owner Joe Tsai acknowledged that contending for a playoff spot probably isn’t a realistic goal for the team in 2025/26 (YouTube link).
“I have to say we’re in a rebuilding year,” Tsai said (hat tip to Brian Lewis of The New York Post). “We spent all of our (2025) picks — we had five first-round draft picks this past summer.
“We have one (first-round) pick in 2026, and we hope to get a good pick. So, you can predict what kind of strategy we will use for this season. But we have a very young team.”
Tsai isn’t saying anything that any Nets or NBA fan doesn’t already know. Brooklyn entered the summer as the only team with significant cap space, but used that room to take on unwanted contracts and continue stockpiling draft picks rather than acquiring win-now help. With five rookie first-round picks on their roster, the Nets will be prioritizing player development over their win-loss record in the coming months.
Although Brooklyn’s approach to the season is no secret, the NBA typically frowns upon any public remarks from an executive or owner suggesting that his team might be in tanking mode. Tsai’s comment about being able to predict the “kind of strategy” the Nets will use to achieve their goal of getting a “good” draft pick can certainly be interpreted that way, so we’ll see if the league office responds at all, perhaps with a fine.
After the Nets won 32 games in 2023/24 and 26 in ’24/25, oddsmakers have set their over/under for ’25/26 at just 20.5 wins. While general manager Sean Marks has insisted he was happy the team exceeded preseason expectations last season, his moves since last December – including trading away veterans Dennis Schröder, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Cameron Johnson – suggest he wouldn’t mind if the Nets were to drop a few more games this year and land a pick higher than No. 8 in the 2026 draft lottery.
In the process of reducing the number of veterans on the roster, Marks has loaded up youth, selecting Egor Demin (No. 8), Nolan Traore (No. 19), Drake Powell (No. 22), Ben Saraf (No. 26), and Danny Wolf (No. 27) in this June’s draft. Brooklyn projects to have the NBA’s youngest team in 2025/26, as Lewis notes.
What an exquisite way to say they’re tanking.
Hope he gets fined hard.
Well, given he is worth billions even $5 million fine would mean nothing more than pocket change to him.
2026 draft is loaded
Like 2019 draft?
Could be better imo
So they don’t think MPJ can lead them to a play in 8th seed?
He can’t do it alone, and he’s not on their future plans anyway.
MPJ, Claxton, Thomas all when healthy can be a play in team. They are one of the youngest teams so will probably be bad like Wiz. They should be a fast pace team, but Claxton the only defense guy I think of on the team.
He will be dumped at some point this season
I don’t know $38-40 million is a lot for him. It is a good price for Nets I guess as their best player. It would be terrible on other teams like Nuggets when the guy is 3rd option.
Openly admitting before the season has even started, that they are actively trying to lose, is a whole new level of arrogance.
How is it arrogant when the team IS so young and likely to lose a lot of games anyway? I don’t know why people take issue with the person saying the obvious thing we all know will happen anyway. It makes zero difference. The league punishes it only because they don’t like the quiet part being said out loud, which is frankly a little silly since even casual fans know how much of a problem tanking has become. But until they further flatten out the lottery odds it will continue to happen. That’s on the league.
There is a very clear line between acknowledging they’ll be bad, and acknowledging their actual intention to lose. Those are two very different things.
The arrogance comes from alluding to their team deliberately losing, in a way that won’t cop punishment.
I’m sure the coaches and players want to do their best and win every game they can. And there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. The tanking part will come from regular rest, being overly cautious with respect to injuries, and trading away anything not nailed down by the deadline. Like pretty much every tanking team does.
Anyway, my larger point was whether they do it in not-so-obvious secret fashion or Tsai ways the quiet part out loud, it’s the same thing. You should have a problem with both or neither but not one or the other.
BKN played too well last year, and it cost them in the draft. I guess the owner is sending a message to his FO and HC that he wants no part of that again.
Sad, though, that tanking has gotten to the point that an owner feels totally comfortable being so open about it. It’s what happens, I guess, when a league doesn’t have a real commissioner. Teams certainly tanked under Stern, but not so shamelessly. Not only did they deny it, they took enough acts to back up those denials. It was a source of shame, and all assumed that if Stern had real evidence of a team not using its best efforts to win (required by the articles of association), that such team would be punished. Now, not only are teams out of the closet, but they boast about their efforts in doing it.
They would never attach a pick to get rid of his contract…
His contract has some value.
His salary is really big, so only way they trade him is by taking on a worse contract (e.g. Paul George).
Big chance fhey keep him, try to increase his value and trade him as an expiring contract next off season…
There’s another extremely young team out there that just won a championship – the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Nets aren’t close to that level but they’re not all that different than what the Thunder were a few years ago.