Could Nets have multiple second round picks? Right now, they do

Tankathon.com is more than its name suggests. Yes, it keeps track of whose “tank” is the most effective when it comes to the lottery in what looks like a top-heavy draft. But it maintains an daily, sometimes hourly (!), record of the full order of the Draft, from No. 1 through No. 60.

And that includes the most obscure scenarios. So this week, we shouldn’t have been surprised that they noted the Nets could very well have two second round picks, the one at No. 40 that was acquired last July in the Raptors trade that also brought the Nets DeMarre Carroll and the Raptors’ lottery protected first. (It’s a Magic pick, the Raptors had acquired.)

The other is the Bucks second round pick at No. 47, that the Nets acquired along with Rashad Vaughn for Tyler Zeller. (Vaughn, of course, was flipped for Dante Cunningham.) The way that pick was protected, it wasn’t initially seen as a 2018 asset.

Under terms of the trade, the Bucks pick was protected. As Woj tweeted February 5, the day of the trade...

And if the pick wasn’t between 31 and 47, the pick wouldn’t be conveyed, unprotected, until 2020, which was cool since the Nets don’t have their own pick that Draft. At the time, 2020 looked like the better bet. The Bucks were winning and the pick was No. 52, meaning it would go to the Suns. But Milwaukee has dropped back and this week, for the first time, the pick moved into the 47th slot.

As Tankathon notes, the Nets now have the 28th (Raptors) pick in the first round and the 40th (Lakers via Raptors) and 47th (Bucks) in the second. Of course, those picks could move around and if Milwaukee goes on a winning streak, the Nets picks goes to 2020. If Milwaukee doesn’t do well, that second pick would move up.

There is a very much outside chance that the Nets could acquire a third second rounder ... if the Pacers went into a late season collapse. If at any point between now and 2022, the Pacers fall into the lottery, the Nets get their second rounder. The pick would become unprotected in 2023. It’s the Pacers last payment in the Thaddeus Young trade that already netted Brooklyn Caris LeVert. That is, as we noted, unlikely. Indiana is currently the fifth seed in the East, one and a half back of the Wizards who hold the fourth.

So, we will have to wait to see how Milwaukee does the rest of the season. The Nets have no real control over it. As for the Nets own pick in the 2018 Draft, Philly holds that. Billy King sent to the 76ers as a payment for their taking on the contracts of Andrei Kirilenko and Jorge Gutierrez.