Now, this is how you tank.
After the Nets won three straight games, and four of five, in late December, running the risk of blowing the front office’s plan to take advantage of their June draft pick, they’re well on their way to falling back down the standings.
They’ve dropped four in a row, nine of their past 10 and are 2-12 since that three-game winning streak.
And it won’t get any easier for a team that has its own first-round pick this season, but sent next year’s first-rounder to Houston.
Their next five games are on the road, and four of them are against potential playoff teams.
First, they visit the red-hot Clippers in Los Angeles on Sunday.
The Clippers, run by ex-Nets head coach Lawrence Frank — now the president of operations in Los Angeles — have shaken off a slow start and won seven of their last eight games to get back into playoff contention.
After that come games at Phoenix, Denver, beatable Utah and then Detroit.
At that point, they will be just four days away from the Feb. 5 trade deadline and could look to move some of their veteran players, notably Michael Porter Jr.
The seventh-year forward has played well throughout his first season in Brooklyn, but as the losing mounts, it’s fair to wonder what kind of impact it will have on the team.
The Nets responded well Friday against Boston after Wednesday’s historic 54-point loss to the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
But they still blew a lead in overtime and ended up losing … again.
Afterwards, Porter — who had his best game in weeks against the Celtics — was asked about the team’s fight in taking Boston into double overtime.
He didn’t want to hear it.
“We lost,’’ Porter said. “That’s all I really care about. I don’t care about [any] fight, personally. Obviously, it was a better performance collectively than last game, but we still lost. So it was a game we should have won. We’ve lost too many games this year that come down to the wire like this.’’
With the latest defeat, the Nets remained in fifth position in the draft order.
As noti.group’s Brian Lewis noted recently, “Front offices tank, not players and coaches. [Head coach Jordi] Fernández and his charges are trying to build winning habits, or at the very least, not develop bad ones in defeat.’’
Porter said the team was “discombobulated” on defense when Boston’s Hugo González hit a game-tying 3-pointer as the clock ran down in the first overtime on Friday.
Nic Claxton said he was “confused” about the play and would have to look at the tape to find out how Gonzalez got so open for the shot.
Perhaps that’s to be expected for a young team against a squad that has championship experience.
But there’s a fine line between trying to improve your chances in the draft lottery and running the risk of becoming overwhelmed by the defeats.
The Nets surprised many by winning 26 games last year and then were victims of some poor luck when they slipped to the eighth pick in the 2025 draft, after finishing with the sixth-worst record.
They’ve got a lot riding on the next few months, even if it might not be pretty to watch.
— Additional reporting by Brian Lewis
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
