With Pacers loss in play-in, Nets will now have four picks in Draft

No, the Nets didn’t give up all their picks in the James Harden trade, In fact, with the Pacers loss Thursday in the NBA’s play-in tournament, Sean Marks will have more picks to play with come July 29 than he’s had in his five years as Nets GM — a total of four, one first and three seconds.

Indiana gives up its second rounder to Brooklyn as a result of their loss to Washington. The pick had been acquired (but protected) in Marks first trade, the 2016 Draft Night deal that brought Caris LeVert to Brooklyn for Thaddeus Young. Under terms of the deal, if the Pacers fell out of the playoffs in any year from 2017 through 2022, the pick would convey to the Nets. The protection would have ended in 2023.

So, the Nets will now have their own first rounder, the 27th pick, as well as three seconds: the Pacers at No. 44, the Hawks at No. 49 and the Suns at No. 59. The latter two were acquired in salary dumps, Atlanta’s as part of the Allen Crabbe trade in June 2019 and Phoenix’s as part of the trade that brought Jared Dudley to Brooklyn in 2018.

Will they use all four? Based on their history and the team’s needs, that seems doubtful. The Nets haven’t used a first rounder of their own since 2013, the night of the Boston Celtics trade when they took Mason Plumlee. Since then, the Celts wound up with the Nets picks in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018, the Nets traded their 2019 first to clear cap space for The Clean Sweep and bolstered their bench in 2020 by sending their first rounder to Detroit in a three-team deal that produced Landry Shamet and Bruce Brown.

Expect their seconds to be dangled in trades as sweeteners or to take international players who they’ll stash or to be traded for future seconds or to sign prospects directly to the Long Island Nets. They’ve done all the above in the Marks era.

What do the mock drafts have to say? Tankathon, which updates its selections daily, has the Nets taking Nieemas Queta, a 7’0” Utah State center at No. 27; Scottie Lewis, a 6’5” Florida combo guard at 44; McKinley Wright IV, a 6’0” Colorado point guard at 49 and Isaiah Todd, a 6’10” power forward who played for the G League Ignite this year.

The NBA Draft is scheduled for July 29. No word yet on whether it will be virtual as it was last year or back at Barclays Center where it was held from 2013 through 2019.

We’ll have a mock draft preview soon.