This month won’t be easy for Nets fans as the dreaded lottery draft night is upon us. But it is now time to get over it, we all know it’s going to be hard but Sean Marks and his team are already testing many different markets and leaving no stone unturned by trying to find different avenues to rectify the mess Brooklyn find themselves in.
Europe
First of all they are looking into Europe, this will probably be where the Nets will be most aggressive. Eurohoops.com reported that the Nets had approached Malcolm Delaney of Locomotive Kuban. The 27-year old Baltimore native was undrafted in 2012 coming out of Virginia Tech and went to show his trade in Europe where is has had a successful career.
Delaney’s season ended Friday in the Euroleague Final 4 in Berlin, where the Nets reported to be scouting the Adidas Next Generation Tournament, also in Berlin this weekend. Kuban lost to Mikhail Prokhorov’s former team, CSKA Moscow, and he was seated at courtside alongside new Assistant General Manager Trajan Langdon.
Delaney has been on championship teams in France, Ukraine and Germany the last four years. The Houston Rockets are also reportedly interested in Delany, who has expressed interest in coming back to the United States and giving his first go at the NBA. He seems to be in high demand with two other offers from major European clubs (Barcelona and an unnamed one) but his priority is to come back to the NBA and is a option for Sean Marks and his team.
The Nets have also had interest in Nando deColo, the Euroleague MVP who played for the San Antonio Spurs. Playing in the same game as Delaney, it was a good chance for the Nets owner and Assistant GM to get a look at two players they are obviously interested in.
Other players include Milos Teodosic, a 6’5″ Serbian who plays for CSKA Moscow, Sergio Rodriguez, the Real Madrid point guard and Tomas Satoransky, a 6’7″ point guard.
Draft Combine
The draft combine started this week and it seems a large contingent of Nets staff have headed to Chicago to workout and interview players. But why? The team has no picks in the first round and are choosing at number 55. Sean Marks has commented before that if they really like someone in the draft they could attempt to move up;. I think it’s unlikely, but you never know.
The Nets have taken more than a dozen to Chicago apparently. DeAndre’ Bembry might be that person they are looking at. The 6’6″ St. Joseph’s swingman is seen as a late first rounder, maybe a high second rounder. Experts having him at No. 24, No. 29 and No. 33 (a pick that the team would have had if not for the LA Clippers trade). Others include OU point guard Kay Felder.
The Nets were massively active in Chicago and can’t be doing it to waste time and pretend like they are using their offseason time wisely, so maybe they will try trade up, but the Nets are going to struggle getting the picks. In the past the Nets have combined cash with second round picks to move up, for example getting Bojan Bogdanovic and Juan Pablo Vaulet, but other than the No. 55 pick this year, the Nets don’t have any second round picks to trade until 2021.
Veteran Mini Camp
A second stone Marks has decided to look under is the veteran market, with Brooklyn holding a veteran mini-camp at their new HSS training center over the 23-25 of the month. The Nets ran a similar event two years ago, where they brought in U.S. players who had worked overseas, like DaJuan Summers and DeAndre Liggins of Kentucky but no one from that group wound up on the Nets roster. It’s a long shot a finding a hidden gem, but with the state of the Nets options it has to be done and you never know who could be found.
Long Island Nets and D-League
Brooklyn will be using this as a way to find players like Sean Kilpatrick and Henry Sims and on May 9th, a two-day D-League elite mini-camp in Chicago started. 40 top prospects have come to Chicago in search of a NBA contract and the Nets had a few staff there and were looking for the elite talent that could have been of interest. Many talented players have come through this way such as S.Curry… I mean Seth, not Steph, but he’s a player Brooklyn has been rumored a looking into this offseason.
Sean Marks & Co. are going to have to be inventive in finding ways to get new talent and all the above represent the different avenues that they will explore.