Now, this is how to tank.
After getting off to a surprisingly strong start under head coach Jordi Fernández last season, when the Nets were 5-6 through their first 11 games, they head into the 11th game of this campaign with a 1-9 mark and coming off a pair of lopsided losses.
Their defense is terrible, and so far, their draft haul of five first-rounders is far too raw to make any kind of positive impact this year.
As the Mavericks are finding out, even landing the clear top player in the draft is no guarantee of an immediate turnaround, given Cooper Flagg’s slow start to his NBA career for a Dallas team that’s a mess.
Still, as the Nets position themselves for a high lottery pick this time around after falling to eighth in June’s draft, they’re looking for some development of their inexperienced players, with their next test coming Tuesday against Toronto at Barclays Center.
At the top of the list is Egor Dëmin, the team’s first of five picks at No. 8 overall.
He started the previous two games as Cam Thomas has been out with an injury.
Fernández called it “the right time” to put Dëmin in the starting lineup.
The 19-year-old rookie has shot well from the outside, but the BYU product hasn’t shown an ability to get by defenders.
Fernández and the staff have designed more pick-and-rolls for Dëmin, but the results haven’t been there yet in that facet of his game.
As for Ben Saraf, another Nets first-year point guard who was selected with the 26th pick in the draft, he started the first five games of the season before being sent to the team’s Long Island G-League affiliate.
He was joined there Sunday by fellow rookies Danny Wolf and Nolan Traore.
The 7-foot Wolf, the 27th-overall selection, has put up good numbers on Long Island but appeared in just one game for Brooklyn and could play a role on the team if injuries continue to pile up for the Nets.
With fifth-year veteran Day’Ron Sharpe listed as questionable for Tuesday with the same left hamstring tightness that forced him out of Sunday’s loss, it’s possible Wolf could see more action.
Traore, another 19-year-old point guard, is further away from contributing at the NBA level, while shooting guard Drake Powell has shown flashes in his four NBA appearances, including 15 points in Sunday’s loss to the Knicks — primarily in garbage time.
Back in July, Fernández said that “player development is going to be important” with so many new faces on the roster and little chance for success right away.
But now the Nets are faced with the ugly reality of what that looks like on a game-by-game basis.
Perhaps one or more of their current rookies will benefit from getting knocked around in the NBA or gain an advantage from extra playing time in the G-League.
As Fernández noted following Sunday’s loss regarding how minutes are being divided among the first-year players, “We’re very well-connected with how we want to do things. I want to challenge these guys and develop these guys. There’s not just one avenue. There’s different ways that we can do it.”
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