ESSAY: One day into rebuild, Brooklyn Nets have more promise than they’ve had in years
A new era of Brooklyn basketball has officially begun, and though a rebuild will have some long days and nights, it’s the blank page the franchise needed. A little more than a year ago, Spencer Dinwiddie took the podium in the interview room of HSS Training Center for his exit interview after the Brooklyn Nets were eliminated by the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the 2023 NBA Playoffs.
Dinwiddie, ever the pragmatist, was asked what direction he thought Brooklyn should go. As usual, he answered honestly: “In my opinion, obviously, you have two very distinct paths. I think you’re looking at a team that kind of mirrors a Milwaukee without Giannis. So. if you think you can go get a Giannis, then are you probably a very, very good team at that point? Likely. If you don’t, you do have a bevy of draft picks and probably several guys that could net you more draft picks. So I mean, they can go either route.”
Then, Dinwiddie paused, and, realizing that his employer was planning on driving straight at the fork in road, said, “And you know, shoot, they could also stand pat and roll the dice.”
The Nets indeed stood pat and rolled the dice in 2024, where Dinwiddie played with the same enthusiasm he outlined that third option with: none.
Dinwiddie was simultaneously a major part of Brooklyn’s problems in 2024 and a poster child for the franchise’s transitional state: They were only ever going to convince a guy like him to buy in to a team that desperately needed to go “either route” for so long. Fans snickered at Dinwiddie on his way out the door in February, partly for his poor play, but partly because they realized they had everything in common with him except for the ability to escape.
The interim era of Brooklyn basketball, now forever a footnote to what comes next, officially ended on Tuesday night.
The Nets granted sweet release to Mikal Bridges and to themselves, trading Bridges into the open arms of his college buddies with the New York Knicks, in exchange for a whole lot of picks...
BREAKING: The Brooklyn Nets have agreed in principle on a trade to send F Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks for Bojan Bogdanovic, four unprotected first-round picks, a protected first-round pick via Bucks, an unprotected pick swap and a second-rounder, sources tell ESPN. pic.twitter.com/TEGsIpoa3b— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 26, 2024
General Manager Sean marks also made sure they weren’t going to bottom out for nothing — oh yes, they'll be bottoming out, and we’ll get to that — by snagging the rights to their first-round picks in the 2025 and 2026 NBA Drafts back from the Houston Rockets. They had to pay a hefty price to do so, sending the Rockets four assets — mostly from Phoenix — to do so.
But that 2-for-1 offer pales in comparison to the 15 total first-rounders the Nets own through 2031, as well as 13 seconds, for good measure. Just, um, bare with me and look at this list of Brooklyn’s future firsts:
2024: none
2025: BKN, NYK, MIL (5-30), worst of HOU/PHX/OKC
2026: BKN
2027: worst of BKN/HOU, NYK, PHI (9-30)
2028: best of BKN/NYK/PHX
2029: BKN, NYK, worst of DAL/PHX/HOU
2030: BKN
2031: BKN, NYK
And of course, that conspicuous “none” in the 2024 column could be outdated by the time you’re reading this. Dorian Finney-Smith, Cam Johnson, and Dennis Schröder all linger on this Nets roster as out-of-place veterans who can help a team win, something Brooklyn absolutely does not want to do in 2025. (#WhiteFlagForFlagg?)
I’m thrilled, I can’t lie to you.
I wrote a month ago that those pining for the rebuild route since the demolition of the Clean Sweep Era have often failed to mention one of its most enticing features: It’s way more fun than waiting on a Donovan Mitchell trade request that may not come in time. That’s apparently what happened; I can report some noise in recent weeks that the Nets were looking to upgrade the roster around Mikal Bridges, seemingly giving it one last college try this week before deciding to pull the plug.
Now, the fun begins, and I now have something to write about aside from the same loss, over and over. It will be about the individual progression of the young players who will fill this roster, as well as what we see from Jordi Fernandez, a first-year head coach who seemingly lives and breathes the term ‘player development.’
Fans don’t like to consider their team’s ceiling, much less bump up against it every game. But the Nets did just that in the second half of the 2024 season. Nearly every game after their 13-10 start was a reminder that, for a team full of players on the tail-end of their prime or just hitting it, they weren’t good enough, and wouldn’t be unless a star (or two) descended from above to change their outlook.
Now, the losses won’t have the same effect; the development of Noah Clowney’s jumper, and every complementary skill of every young player Brooklyn adds to the roster is a referendum on the potential success of the entire rebuild, rather than becoming liner notes in a hamster-wheeling 38-win season. In the early stages of a rebuild, there is as much potential as your imagination can hold, and every tiny sliver of it that gets fulfilled is a treat.
I believed all that when I clamored for the Nets to rebuild one year ago, I believed it a month ago, and I believe it today, but my resolve is about to get tested. Because man, there will be a lot of bad basketball at the Barclays Center next season, and probably in the season after that too.
A stone-faced Cam Thomas, after scoring 29 points on 11-of-27 shooting in Brooklyn’s eighth straight loss, will take the podium and offer slightly different versions of “we just got to be better,” which they can’t be, and “we have the talent to do it,” which they won’t have.
The worst part of this whole thing, which is still a long-term positive for the franchise, is that the Nets indeed spent 16 months waiting to pick a direction, only to just now admit how far away the future they want is.
It will always be tough to sell “hey, we’re going to suck now!” to a portion of the fanbase, and really, who’s to say they’re not knowledgeable if they don’t get excited by losing? We saw how much of a slog 32-50 was this season, 22-60 can only be so enjoyable if the seeds it plants are years are from becoming fruit...
goodbye Mikal, my grandmother will miss you greatly pic.twitter.com/ZCabdx7bV7— Lucas Kaplan (@LucasKaplan_) June 26, 2024
It doesn’t really matter if Yahoo Sports’ Jake Fischer’s reporting on Bridges is more accurate or if Ian Begley of SNY has more of the true details down. The former reported that Bridges never pressured Brooklyn to trade him to the cross-town rival, but rather that the Nets themselves were open to the idea of trading him, and then “the Knicks made an offer the Nets couldn’t refuse,” while Begley quickly reported that Bridges put his cojones on the table, asking Sean Marks to set him free.
The Mikal Bridges deal came together quickly after Bridges informed the Nets that he wanted to be a Knick. Bridges was prepared to sign with NYK and his side was prepared to use that leverage to keep other teams from trading for him, per SNY sources.— Ian Begley (@IanBegley) June 26, 2024
I’d assume Begley’s version of events is probably closer to the truth, given his reputation reporting on both the Knicks and the Nets, given that multiple sources within the Nets admitted Bridges’ increasingly ornery nature as the losing season progressed, and given that Bridges long been rumored to be “open” to joining the Knicks. I’ve consumed the NBA for long enough to understand what “open” really means, you’d think.
And if Bridges did request a trade, it’s hardly surprising that the ‘franchise player’ not making franchise player money got tired of playing for a direction-less team while drawing the ire of a fanbase whose honeymoon phase with him lasted less than a calendar year, after he replaced the greatest talent the fanbase had ever known.
In doing so, Bridges set Brooklyn up with a future, with all the draft picks you could ever want when executing a rebuild, hammered home by a great piece of work from Sean Marks to get his two most important assets back from Houston.
Booing Bridges when he visits Barclays as a member of the blue-and-orange next season is how this goes, particularly after seeing him and his Villanova boys celebrate online after the trade, after a season of playful seduction.
@jalenbrunson1 @joshhart y’all was tampering !— 13am Adebayo (@Bam1of1) June 26, 2024
But on the inside, fans should be thanking Mikal Bridges.
After sixteen months of wallowing in the past, some of which will continue until there’s a parade down Flatbush, Sean marks & Co. have committed to a rebuild that’s gotten off on the right foot. And it’s one that hasn’t even fully started yet, with the roster still in flux. We’ve covered the veterans still here, who knows how this affects Nic Claxton’s free agency?
There will be dark times ahead, losing records, games so uninteresting you vow to never purchase another bucket of popcorn at the Barclays Center again, dimmed further by a poor showing from a prospect that’s supposed to lead the Nets in this new era. But hell, there is an era, a promising direction even if we’re just at the start of the journey.
A blank page.
And given what’s been penned in the Nets’ recent past, that’s cause for a smile.
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