LAS VEGAS — Nets GM Sean Marks has only spoken publicly once since the team traded Mikal Bridges, and team owner Joe Tsai not at all.
But multiple highly placed sources peeled the curtain back on Brooklyn’s thinking, explaining its heel turn from chasing stars to embracing a rebuild as all part of game theory.
“[The view had been] that if you’re in New York City, you can’t be a bad team, because the fan base is not going to support you. It’s such a big media market, if you’re a terrible team, everything gets very bad,” one source told The Post of the organization’s initial aversion to a rebuild.
“But you also have to think about the long term. You cannot be a mediocre team for a long time. So you have to set yourself up to either be really good, and if you only see a path to be just mediocre in the near term, then you have to consider an option that can take you to a rebuild.”
Frankly, the Nets were worse than mediocre.
They finished last season 32-50, their worst record since 2017-18.
And that was with Bridges, whose game fell off.
Bridges averaged just 15.4 points over his final 29 games following a Feb. 14 loss in Boston, after which he was openly critical of the team’s direction.
Through that point, Brooklyn had leaned toward trying to add an All-Star running mate for Bridges, but their underachieving season forced a hard look in the mirror.
“Is this the right time to go and chase a big star to get us into the top three seeds in the Eastern Conference? It’s just a matter of opportunity,” the source told The Post.
“When we see that our team last year performed below expectations — and it’s something that everybody was just disappointed in — then we asked ourselves can we add pieces that will make us much better? The answer was, well, it’ll just depend on what happens, who’s available.”
The source never named Donovan Mitchell, a Nets target who many league execs expected to be available.
But when the New York-bred star opted to stay with the Cavaliers, a Brooklyn target was off the table.
But what was on the table — what had been for some time — was a monstrous offer for Bridges.
One that could power their rebuild.
“[We’re] always willing to change course if the circumstances change … not wedded to any one particular strategy. It’s a league of 30 teams, of 450 players. At any given time something — some pieces — can move that will affect your thinking,” a source told The Post. “It’s all a game theory kind of situation, so you could never precisely plan your future.”
So what happened elsewhere impacted Brooklyn.
Though Marks said the Bridges final deal came together quickly — technically true since Bojan Bogdanovic and Shake Milton weren’t even Knicks until Feb. 8 and March 5 — a second source told The Post the broad strokes had been offered as early as the Feb. 8 trade deadline.
That likely means the five first-round picks and a swap.
“We were always prepared for a rebuild. It wasn’t like, oh, let’s wait to be lucky to find the star that’s coming into free agency. We were always prepared to pivot in the other direction if we could see the right opportunity to do that,” a source said. “And who would’ve thought we could trade Mikal Bridges for five first-round draft picks? And who would’ve thought we were able to find that window of opportunity to get Houston to agree to get our picks back?
“It was eye-opening to see the Knicks offer these kinds of assets for Mikal. If you look at our ability to reload our assets, particularly in the draft year of 2025, we have one pick that’s our own that could be very. very good. … We’ve got three more first-round picks that probably will be in the 20s but it’s a very deep draft. Plus, we have our own second-round pick. That’s a class we can get very excited about.”
Whether the Nets get Cooper Flagg, Ace Bailey, Dylan Harper or somebody else, they hope that excitement pans out, that their game theory results in winning games.
