Nets hoping to beat NBA draft lottery odds, change franchise like they did 25 years ago
All of the Nets tanking and retooling was about Monday, about getting to the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery and, hopefully, winning it as they did a quarter century ago.That started their turnaround from also-rans to conference champs.Can it happen again?The Nets head to Chicago with the sixth-best odds to win the lottery — a 9 percent chance of winning the right to select Cooper Flagg.
Coach Jordi Fernández will be their representative on the dais — and hopefully bring them good fortune.“We’re just ready to be lucky,” Fernández said recently.Right before the Knicks will tip off their huge Game 4 playoff tilt against Boston in the Eastern Conference semifinals, the Nets will face a defining moment of their own, hoping to see deputy commissioner Mark Tatum reveal their logo for the first pick.The Nets can end up almost anywhere from first to 10th, with seventh or eighth likelier than all other spots combined.Their odds of each spot are as follows:This will be the first lottery pick they’ve possessed since 2010.
Where it lands Monday will go a long way toward determining their future.Winning could be franchise-altering — as it was when they beat even worse odds back in 2000.Playing in New Jersey then, the Nets went into the lottery with the seventh seed and just a 4.4 percent chance of winning.
Tucked away in the NBA’s Secaucus, N.J., offices just four miles from the Meadowlands, they got lucky when one of their 44 number combinations — 6-8-9-14 — was drawn in the pingpong ball lottery.“Being in the room as deputy commissioner Russ Granik started pulling them out … I shouted ‘bingo’ as they fell our way,” then-Nets co-chairman Finn Wentworth recalled to The Post.But Wentworth, locked away in a secure location with the other team representatives, couldn’t share the news with the rest of the Nets brass.In another room on another floor, they didn’t find out until the envelopes were opened and principal owner Lewis Katz started joyously pum...