What could have been in the draft

[Sharcm1]

Every few years I like to look back and see what players the nets could have had if they didn't make trades and drafted players that were available. I like to make a new team.

2010 the nets took favors 3rd. Paul George was still on the board. So my pick is Paul george. The nets also had the 27th pick and the 31st pick. I would not have traded jordan crawford for damion james. and instead of tibor pleiss I would have picked and kept lance stephenson.

Roster so far: Brook, George, Crawford, stephenson

2011: Now the nets traded for dwill the 3rd pick in 2011 with favors. If they didn't make the trade what could they have had. At that point we would not have traded for dwill and would have had harris still as our point guard so I would have taken a point guard. the best one on the board after 3rd kemba walker. 3rd is high for him but it was a weak draft.
The nets then would still have 27th pick and they traded for brooks. How about chandler parsons who was taken in the second round.
then at 36 they took jordan williams. instead I would have taken jon leuer as a back up big.

So far so good. Lopez, george, crawford, stephenson, walker, parsons and leuer, harris

2012. Oh the wallace trade. Instead we can take lillard as our point guard and trade harris for something. or barnes as our sf and keep harris. second round didn't matter. tyshawn is fine.

2013 is too soon to call but we would have had the warriors 2013 pick (not given to the jazz for dwill) and 22.
Michael carter williams anyone. still would have taken plumlee.

So with carter williams at the point, george at the 2, harrison barnes at the 3, brook at the 5 and we would have kept humphries and still got mirza. not bad. then with the pick of carter williams traded harris for a pf or back ups.

just a thought. too bad.

[MrDollarBills]

I can't really play the what if game with the draft and the Nets. We are historically one of the worst drafting teams in the league.

[CalamityX12]

what if we never hired Billy King?

[N Ireland Nets]

Here's a fun game to play, where would we be if King didn't make the Wallace trade, failed to trade for Joe Johnson and Williams walked.

We'd have basically a top lotto pick along with Lopez, Green, Teletovic and tons of cap room to go sign someone, say Dragic, who we had lined up in case Williams walked.

We'd probably have selected Barnes, Drummond or Ross with the pick that ended up 6th overall.

Dragic
??
Green
Drummond
Lopez

All our future picks and plenty of cap flexibility.

Fast forward to where we are now, holy **** it's depressing.

[Daaaarryyl]

I agree that threads like this are ridiculous but they are pretty fun at the same time.

The one that boggles the mind most for me is the fact that Marc Gasol was selected in the middle of the 2nd round. A DPOY and one of the better offensive centers in the league bypassed by nearly every team in the game is astonishing IMO.

[Keith Van Horn]

too much hindsight with thread like this. Of course any team would have taken George, probably even #1 over Wall when he was the unanimous top pick. Hard to say with what could have been.

We need to ax King and Kidd at the same time. Bring in a savvy GM and vet coach like Hollins or Karl.

[M I K E]

I always love this "what if game" because everybody always picks the best players in hindsight...I wish people would pick even worse players than we drafted instead. It would be more honest and fun.

[UcanUwill]

I agree that threads like this are ridiculous but they are pretty fun at the same time.

The one that boggles the mind most for me is the fact that Marc Gasol was selected in the middle of the 2nd round. A DPOY and one of the better offensive centers in the league bypassed by nearly every team in the game is astonishing IMO.

Very late bloomer. At the time, it even seemed he was taken too high, and was mainly known because of his name. Extraordinary development, some of his skills appeared out of nowhere.

[Jersey Generals]

too much hindsight with thread like this. Of course any team would have taken George, probably even #1 over Wall when he was the unanimous top pick. Hard to say with what could have been.

We need to ax King and Kidd at the same time. Bring in a savvy GM and vet coach like Hollins or Karl.

Actually, a Nets trade for the 10th pick was being discussed, so the idea of taking George isn't too far off.

[vincecarter4pres]

too much hindsight with thread like this. Of course any team would have taken George, probably even #1 over Wall when he was the unanimous top pick. Hard to say with what could have been.

We need to ax King and Kidd at the same time. Bring in a savvy GM and vet coach like Hollins or Karl.

Actually, a Nets trade for the 10th pick was being discussed, so the idea of taking George isn't too far off.

Yup yup.

Indiana offered Granger and the 10th pick for Harris and the 3rd pick.

Also that same draft Portland offered LMA and the 21st pick for Harris and the 3rd pick.

I was pushing the idea of Harris for the 10th overall pick for months before the draft to take George.

[Hello Brooklyn]

This is stupid. We weren't gonna take George. No competent GM would give up an asset like Favors, who was supposed to have unlimited raw talent and trade value. And Devin Harris was an all-star the year before.

We were gonna stick with Derrick Favors. But at the end of the day if you have a chance to get Deron Williams or Carmelo Anthony you do it. And I don't regret that decision at all.

Do I really care that we lost on the 3rd pick in the 2011 draft either? No not really.

Where you can use hindsight and make King look (Please Use More Appropriate Word) is def 2012. No I don't think we would have taken Lillard. But that draft pick could have gotten us Dwight Howard. Or someone else of real value.

Heck even Harrison Barnes, would be a lot better than Wallace and his contract.

At the end of the day, not making the Deron trade was not a realistic option. It was too good of an offer to pass up.

But if we never made the Wallace trade we could be looking at a Deron-Dwight combo. Or at the very worst if Deron left, a young and rebuilding team around Dragic, Lopez, and other young players.

[vincecarter4pres]

This is stupid. We weren't gonna take George. No competent GM would give up an asset like Favors, who was supposed to have unlimited raw talent and trade value. And Devin Harris was an all-star the year before.

We were gonna stick with Derrick Favors. But at the end of the day if you have a chance to get Deron Williams or Carmelo Anthony you do it. And I don't regret that decision at all.

Do I really care that we lost on the 3rd pick in the 2011 draft either? No not really.

Where you can use hindsight and make King look (Please Use More Appropriate Word) is def 2012. No I don't think we would have taken Lillard. But that draft pick could have gotten us Dwight Howard. Or someone else of real value.

Heck even Harrison Barnes, would be a lot better than Wallace and his contract.

At the end of the day, not making the Deron trade was not a realistic option. It was too good of an offer to pass up.

But if we never made the Wallace trade we could be looking at a Deron-Dwight combo. Or at the very worst if Deron left, a young and rebuilding team around Dragic, Lopez, and other young players.

The problem is there's always more then one way to skin a cat.

Utah and Denver both wanted to Lopez for their star player but "settled" for the packages they did.

Forget hindsight about Brook's injuries and the such, just think about if you got say LMA and the 21st pick(irrelevant piece more or less, but that was the pretty much confirmed offer) for the 3rd and Harris, we then could have traded Lopez and salary filler or cap space for Deron or Melo.

Then we'd still have a host of picks, still could have got the pick for Twill, etc. Sure they wouldn't have been lotto picks, but they would have all been picks capable of acquiring role players to place around these 2 guys or to move up into the top 10 in a draft to nab that prospective 3rd piece and we'd still have had cap room to either get a guy like Tyson Chandler or throw max at a guy like Batum, or have kept the Dwight Howard threat open simply through free agency.

Or even think about Chris Paul for Lopez.

Or even think about without us being desperate, chances are we would have had a shot at a free agent Deron.

The possibilities would have been endless.

Even a Granger and Paul George duo plus Lopez, or with Lopez shipped out for Deron or Chris Paul? Then plus a max FA signing like Chandler?

Man... what could have been...

[N Ireland Nets]

This is stupid. We weren't gonna take George. No competent GM would give up an asset like Favors, who was supposed to have unlimited raw talent and trade value. And Devin Harris was an all-star the year before.

We were gonna stick with Derrick Favors. But at the end of the day if you have a chance to get Deron Williams or Carmelo Anthony you do it. And I don't regret that decision at all.

Do I really care that we lost on the 3rd pick in the 2011 draft either? No not really.

Where you can use hindsight and make King look (Please Use More Appropriate Word) is def 2012. No I don't think we would have taken Lillard. But that draft pick could have gotten us Dwight Howard. Or someone else of real value.

Heck even Harrison Barnes, would be a lot better than Wallace and his contract.

At the end of the day, not making the Deron trade was not a realistic option. It was too good of an offer to pass up.

But if we never made the Wallace trade we could be looking at a Deron-Dwight combo. Or at the very worst if Deron left, a young and rebuilding team around Dragic, Lopez, and other young players.

This is where I disagree.

We gave up a much better package for D Will than the Knicks did for Melo. After the Melo trade he signed his deal long term with the Knicks while we had to convince D Will just to stay.

In reality we should've have made a move for D Will or Melo at all. We should've continued to accumulate assets and developing our talent that we had. So at the time of the D Will trade we had a front court of Hump, Favors and Lopez basically. We could've started to give Favors more minutes and really made him the perfect foil for Lopez.

Then we had a nice lotto pick in 2011 we could've added. We had our big men set and weren't going to use Harris long term at PG so we would likely have looked for a guard or SF. So take any of Knight, Walker, Fredette, Thompson, Burks, Leonard or Shumpert.

Maybe our front office would've fallen in love with Valančiūnas, Biyombo or Kanter and decided to bring in another big to give us nice front court depth.

Who knows, we might have sucked a lot more than we did with Williams after he joined and ended up with the 1st overall pick who was Irving. But pick a guy and move on and develop him.

Move into the 2011-2012 season, which was our last in New Jersey, keep trying to develop our youngsters while tanking for a high pick again. We ended up with the 6th overall pick and that was with D Will and Wallace on our roster while we tried to win. So again we could've ended up with the 1st overall pick or a good shot at it and Davis. Take any player in the top 9 picks to be fair, which we would've easily have been and add them to the roster. Pick one of Davis, MKG, Beal, Waiters, Robinson, Lillard, Barnes, Ross and Drummond.

So being completely random, you could be moving to Brooklyn with Walker, Beal, Favors, Lopez and tons of cap room with every single pick available to trade. In the summer of 2012 should've been the point we started to make our move. Why couldn't we have targeted D Will as a free agent? or Chris Paul even?

We would've been such a fantastic position long term. James Harden was being shopped for a good pick in the 2012 draft basically and ended up in Houston. Deals like those would have been available to us to make a splash. Worst case we would be entering Brooklyn with an exciting young team who have high ceilings with cap room and picks in one of the biggest media markets in the USA with a brand spanking new arena.

We would've been the anti-Christ to the Knicks, a team who were patient and developing their young assets with plenty of assets going forward with the GSW pick also still with us. New York fans would've been flocking to support Brooklyn because the Knicks would still be struggling right now chasing players and making short term moves. They would be around us in the standings with no real flexibility and picks to make changes watching a Brooklyn team who can only get better in time or start to make a few trades to bring in better players.

Trading for D Will was arguably the worst move we made because it made King push to bring in average players all in an attempt to keep D Will with the Nets. It's what led to Kings stupid move after stupid move. Notice as well I didn't just cherry pick the best players in each draft as to who we would select. Who's to tell we wouldn't have done a Cavs and got a few 1st overall picks and selected Irving and Davis? I know it's extreme but it would've been a possibility if we had been patient.

[Rollydog]

Yup impatience on Kings part. almost never pays off. especially gambling away our insurance policy (draft picks) when we have an injury prone team,

Going way back, also wish we had traded Harris and Carter when their value was higher, and not given up R Anderson.

My alternate reality team is

Irving /
Harden / Korver
Kawhi Leonard / AK47
Anderson / Favors
Lopez

[DarkXaero]

Here's a fun game to play, where would we be if King didn't make the Wallace trade, failed to trade for Joe Johnson and Williams walked.

We'd have basically a top lotto pick along with Lopez, Green, Teletovic and tons of cap room to go sign someone, say Dragic, who we had lined up in case Williams walked.

We'd probably have selected Barnes, Drummond or Ross with the pick that ended up 6th overall.

Dragic
??
Green
Drummond
Lopez

All our future picks and plenty of cap flexibility.

Fast forward to where we are now, holy **** it's depressing.

From what I recall, King was going to do the JJ trade regardless of whether Deron stayed or not. That's how much of a **** idiot he is.

[DarkXaero]

This is stupid. We weren't gonna take George. No competent GM would give up an asset like Favors, who was supposed to have unlimited raw talent and trade value. And Devin Harris was an all-star the year before.

We were gonna stick with Derrick Favors. But at the end of the day if you have a chance to get Deron Williams or Carmelo Anthony you do it. And I don't regret that decision at all.

Do I really care that we lost on the 3rd pick in the 2011 draft either? No not really.

Where you can use hindsight and make King look (Please Use More Appropriate Word) is def 2012. No I don't think we would have taken Lillard. But that draft pick could have gotten us Dwight Howard. Or someone else of real value.

Heck even Harrison Barnes, would be a lot better than Wallace and his contract.

At the end of the day, not making the Deron trade was not a realistic option. It was too good of an offer to pass up.

But if we never made the Wallace trade we could be looking at a Deron-Dwight combo. Or at the very worst if Deron left, a young and rebuilding team around Dragic, Lopez, and other young players.

The problem is there's always more then one way to skin a cat.

Utah and Denver both wanted to Lopez for their star player but "settled" for the packages they did.

Forget hindsight about Brook's injuries and the such, just think about if you got say LMA and the 21st pick(irrelevant piece more or less, but that was the pretty much confirmed offer) for the 3rd and Harris, we then could have traded Lopez and salary filler or cap space for Deron or Melo.

Then we'd still have a host of picks, still could have got the pick for Twill, etc. Sure they wouldn't have been lotto picks, but they would have all been picks capable of acquiring role players to place around these 2 guys or to move up into the top 10 in a draft to nab that prospective 3rd piece and we'd still have had cap room to either get a guy like Tyson Chandler or throw max at a guy like Batum, or have kept the Dwight Howard threat open simply through free agency.

Or even think about Chris Paul for Lopez.

Or even think about without us being desperate, chances are we would have had a shot at a free agent Deron.

The possibilities would have been endless.

Even a Granger and Paul George duo plus Lopez, or with Lopez shipped out for Deron or Chris Paul? Then plus a max FA signing like Chandler?

Man... what could have been...

Had we never done the trade for Deron, we could have waited an extra year to enter the Chris Paul sweepstakes. We could have easily offered a better package than what Clippers did. That extra year of tanking would have given us another high lotto pick. IMO, we traded for a "star" too early. Those last few years in Jersey were hell and should have been for a rebuild period or a period where assets are compiled for a superstar trade.

[Hello Brooklyn]

You guys may be right in saying that we would be better off not getting Deron.

But we needed a superstar for Brooklyn. Rolling into the market featuring Lopez and Harris wasn't an option. So I get why King did it.

To this day, I don't think we really overpaid for Deron. He was a top 10 arguably top 5 player. Top 2 PG. And was at that point a superstar. He was highly coveted.

We gave up two lottery picks (both of which haven't panned out) and Devin Harris, and a protected GSW pick. I think its comparable to what other stars were traded for.

But you guys are right in saying what he did after that was completely inane.

I don't think Deron was going to Dallas even if we didn't get Joe Johnson. We could have found other free agents and made other trades. And Dwight Howard was still very much an option.

Even the KG/Pierce trade wasn't as bad at the time, that it does know.

I just think the Wallace trade and the JJ pick swaps doomed us long term.

[Prokorov]

I think if we had a 2nd star who was a leader and a competitor the Dwill thing wouldnt look so bad. But we basically paid for an underachiever who doesnt look great when adversity hits and doesnt lead on or off the court.

he is no longer a top 5-10 player, and really at best in the 15-20 range, even when he isnt dinged up with an injury.

I think it was a deal we had to make... but that is also favoring in my bias in that i thought favors was never going to be more then a role player. It was a slight overpay for dwill, but nothing like what we overpaid for wallace or johnson.

how we didnt GET a first round for johnson let alone give one up PLUS a pick swap is beyond me. the wallace trade you dont even need to mention. you could try and sabatoge your team and not come up with something that bad