Asked during a panel hosted by the All-In Podcast about his predictions for the Nets‘ this season, team owner Joe Tsai acknowledged that contending for a playoff spot probably isn’t a realistic goal for the team in 2025/26 (YouTube link).
“I have to say we’re in a rebuilding year,” Tsai said (hat tip to Brian Lewis of The New York Post). “We spent all of our (2025) picks — we had five first-round draft picks this past summer.
“We have one (first-round) 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.”
Tsai isn’t saying anything that any Nets or NBA fan doesn’t already know. Brooklyn entered the summer as the only team with significant cap space, but used that room to take on unwanted contracts and continue stockpiling draft picks rather than acquiring win-now help. With five rookie first-round picks on their roster, the Nets will be prioritizing player development over their win-loss record in the coming months.
Although Brooklyn’s approach to the season is no secret, the NBA typically frowns upon any public remarks from an executive or owner suggesting that his team might be in tanking mode. Tsai’s comment about being able to predict the “kind of strategy” the Nets will use to achieve their goal of getting a “good” draft pick can certainly be interpreted that way, so we’ll see if the league office responds at all, perhaps with a fine.
After the Nets won 32 games in 2023/24 and 26 in ’24/25, oddsmakers have set their over/under for ’25/26 at just 20.5 wins. While general manager Sean Marks has insisted he was happy the team exceeded preseason expectations last season, his moves since last December – including trading away veterans Dennis Schröder, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Cameron Johnson – suggest he wouldn’t mind if the Nets were to drop a few more games this year and land a pick higher than No. 8 in the 2026 draft lottery.
In the process of reducing the number of veterans on the roster, Marks has loaded up youth, selecting Egor Demin (No. 8), Nolan Traore (No. 19), Drake Powell (No. 22), Ben Saraf (No. 26), and Danny Wolf (No. 27) in this June’s draft. Brooklyn projects to have the NBA’s youngest team in 2025/26, as Lewis notes.