Tanking has become a taboo subject for NBA organizations. While numerous teams enter each season angling for a top draft pick, you'll rarely hear an owner, front office executive or coach use the word “tank.”
Last month at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai didn’t explicitly admit to his team tanking, but he came close.
“Well, I have to say that we’re in a rebuilding year,” Tsai said on the All-In podcast. “We spent all of our [2025] picks — we had five first-round draft picks this past summer… We have one 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.”
The Nets jettisoned themselves into a rebuild last offseason. General Manager Sean Marks traded Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks and dealt four first-round picks to the Houston Rockets to reacquire Brooklyn's 2025 and 2026 first-rounders.
Will the Nets ramp up tanking urgency after falling to eighth pick in 2025 draft?
After holding onto several impactful veterans early last season, the Nets finished with the NBA's sixth-worst record and fell to the eighth pick in June's draft. Brooklyn used that selection on BYU point guard Egor Demin. While Demin and several other Nets rookies are promising, the team should show greater urgency while tanking this season.
One of the picks Marks traded to the Rockets was the Phoenix Suns' 2025 first-rounder, which the Nets finished just two spots ahead of in June's draft. If Brooklyn fails to secure top lottery odds and falls out of the top five of the 2026 draft, fans will not view the Houston trade favorably.
Further, many draft analysts consider the top of the 2026 class, which includes prospects like Darryn Peterson, A.J. Dybansta and Cam Boozer, stronger than this year's highly-touted group.
Several NBA teams will be racing towards the bottom of the standings for a chance to select one of the above prospects. Expect Brooklyn to be among that group from day one of the regular season. The Nets will aim to take a significant step forward next season, as they owe the Rockets an unprotected 2027 first-round pick swap.
