The Brooklyn season ends fortunately on Sunday.
Then they will begin what the Nets chief coach, Jordi Fernández, repeatedly calls the greatest summer of their lives.
Apart from hyperbole, it is easy to see why.
The future of Nets will be decisive largely in exactly one month in the NBA draft lottery on May 12.
It has still happened yet, but it will be one of the most fundamental points in its recent history.
That is why the season was this attempt and exhausting.
Regardless of what happens in the final of Sunday’s season against the Knicks, it is guaranteed that Brooklyn will end with the sixth record of league sausages, and there is the sixth best probability of the lottery.
Nets have a 9.0 percent chance of winning and 37.2 percent probability of obtaining a coveted selection of the 4 best.
But, with much, the most likely result is much worse, land seventh (29.8 percent) or eighth (20.6).
The Brooklyn GM, Sean Marks, has regularly collected not only the most capital’s capital space (more than $ 50 million this summer) but also the most future Draft teams (31).
The Nets have five selections in June, four of them first round.
Upon reaching the weekend, they were scheduled for the sixth, tied in 18, tied in 25, 27 and 36.
“We are not going to know where the lottery will fall because that is part of the probabilities and, therefore,,” said Fernández recently. “Then, you can only control what you can control, and now that is what we know with certainty.
“This is not the end of anything … This is only the next game, the next game that goes to the most important summer of our lives.”
After Sunday’s final in the center of Barclays, the Knicks rivals will go to the postseason while the Nets go to the low season.
That’s where Marks will have important calls to make.
Some will be affected by things outside their control.
The potential ties, and there will probably be some, with nine teams crowded within four games of the other in the classification, will break days after the regular season ends.
Then comes the lottery so important, where networks could land Cooper Flagg or fall as low as dozens.
That, in turn, could influence what comes next.
The sources have repeatedly told The Post that part of the idea by collecting the best first -round teams in the first round was not to make them real, but to use at least several in the trade for an established star.
Two separate sources have suggested that Giannis Antetokounmpo is at the top of the desire list, if it is ever available.
But do not?
The networks not only have to make decisions about their own free agents, restricted free agents such as Cam Thomas, Day’ron Sharpe and Ziaire Williams, as well as without restrictions such as Trendon Watford, but also in the market.
That means deciding in one direction.
Are they tanqued? Or do they try?
They are in the unique position of being the only team that is not Detroit (and possible Utah) with a wide capitalization room.
They could sacrifice the sacrifice sheets to the restricted free agents who fit their timeline, such as Josh Giddey, Quentin Grimes, Santi Aldama and Jonathan Kumina, or free agents without restrictions such as Ty Jerome).
But that comes with a capture.
Or more like a capture 22.
Diving in the market for shocking players, even if they are put in positive contracts that will be negotiable active in a year, it will not be held with its tank potential next season, in a 2026 deposit of 2026 DEP as supposed.
They clearly obtained next year’s selection for a reason.
Marks had shortened the Suns in Kevin Durant’s trade, and seems wise.
Separating from those Phoenix teams last summer was a loved price to pay to obtain their own 2025 and 2026 of the first round of Houston.
To land an MVP as Antetokounmpo is obviously a home run, but would it be worth adding minor players to turn the exchange of rockets into a sunken cost?
The other option, of course, is that Marks follow the plan of his first successful Brooklyn reconstruction.
I could enter less shocking players with one -year -old offers, or two -year pacts with a team option to point out that space in 2026 for a free -aged free agent class, while aiming another high lottery selection.
After exchanging Dorian Finney-Smith and Dennis Schroder earlier this season, Cam Johnson and Nic Watchton could turn to minor players with agreements that expire intense attachments.
In short, receive paid selections to lose.
Or have your cake and eat it too.