If the Nets‘ recent hot streak didn’t already say enough, two key veterans are making it perfectly clear: Brooklyn’s players are not interested in tanking.
With six wins in their last seven games, the Nets moved to within 1.5 games of the Eastern Conference’s final spot in the Play-In Tournament.
Yet some fans are quick to bemoan that every win lessens the Nets’ chances at the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, where do-it-all Duke forward Cooper Flagg is considered the prize.
“We don’t care,” Cam Johnson said matter-of-factly after Wednesday’s 100-96 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers.
“We do not care what they say about that. Listen, at the end of the day, the 15, 18 guys on his team have a job to do, and our job is to not try to get a draft pick. Our job is simply to win basketball games.”
The Nets (20-34) currently have an 8.2% chance at landing the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft lottery, according to the website Tankathon. Those are the seventh-best odds in the NBA.
They have a 34.5% chance to end up with a top-four selection.
Many expected the Nets to be in the mix for the No. 1 pick after they traded Mikal Bridges to the Knicks last offseason. In a separate deal, the Nets re-acquired their own 2025 first-round selection from the Houston Rockets, negating a previous swap.
But the Nets improved Wednesday to 20-34, already eclipsing Las Vegas’ projected win total of 18.5.
“We’re competitors,” Nets center Nic Claxton said. “We put so much time in. We’ve been grinding our whole life to get to this stage. We could care less about draft picks. We don’t care.”
The 18-year-old Flagg — who is averaging 19.8 points, 7.6 rebounds and 4.0 assists as a freshman — is widely expected to be taken first overall this June, while ultra-talented Rutgers guards Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper are also coveted prospects.
The Nets, in their first year under head coach Jordi Fernandez, jumped out to a surprising 9-10 start before losing 23 of their next 28 games. During the season, the Nets have traded veterans Dennis Schroder and Dorian Finney-Smith and agreed to a buyout with Ben Simmons.
But Brooklyn went into the All-Star break with a 6-1 record in its last seven games, with Claxton’s rim protection anchoring a defense that boasts the NBA’s best rating (103.4) in that stretch.
“We’re not naive to it. The fans are upset when we win,” Claxton said. “That’s just what it is. It’s just a part of it, but we work so hard every single day, so we can’t try to lose games. We’re gonna go out and try to win every game, but I understand where the fans are coming from. I feel why they would want us to lose this year and everything. I feel them, but we want to win.”
The Nets are now much closer to the 10th-seeded Chicago Bulls for the final play-in spot than they are to the NBA-worst Washington Wizards, whose 9-45 record is 11 games worse than Brooklyn’s.
Under the current lottery format, the NBA’s worst three teams each get 14% odds for the No. 1 overall pick. The New Orleans Pelicans (12-42) and Utah Jazz (13-40) round out the current three.
The Nets are two years removed from the blockbuster trades that sent Kyrie Irving to Dallas and Kevin Durant to Phoenix, leaving Brooklyn without a clear-cut superstar in a league driven by them.
But Johnson, who was part of the return for Durant, does not want to hear from fans who think the Nets should tank.
“If that’s what they think, then they’re not really a fan, you know what I mean?” Johnson said. “They don’t want us to succeed. You’re going to ask our own players to lose? We’re not going to do that. We’re out there to compete to win every game.”