NetsDaily Off-Season Report - No. 6

First of all, big thanks to ND reporter Lucas Kaplan who wrote up the last three Off-Season Reports while yours truly spent nearly three weeks in Turkey and Greece. We did not scout the national league championships then taking place in Istanbul and Athens, but we did grab a happy snap of this store as we departed Athens...

Giannis and his brothers now have three such stores, one in Milwaukee, two in Athens. And no, we are not predicting that there will soon be a fourth at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic. We’re just explaining where we’ve been in recent weeks. Yes, that’s all. Nothing more. Really.

Mention of the AntetokounBros store (and possible future locations and ramifications) does fit in today’s context. It’s all about reading tea leaves, things like who the Brooklyn Nets added to their front office and front office. who they subtracted ... and what exactly did Joe Tsai say in Oslo, or Yale or Shanghai about the Nets strategy going forward.

Brian Lewis took a shot at what the tea leaves are saying about the choice of Jordi Fernandez and his eight assistants, half of whom are new to Brooklyn. In short, writes Lewis, the Nets are in development mode.

Picking Jordi Fernandez, a first-time NBA head coach with a development background, instead of a proven-but-pricey veteran such as Mike Budenholzer speaks to that.

The sort of assistant coaches Fernandez has surrounded himself with is further proof of the Nets’ unspoken acknowledgement of where they are.

“It’s a really exciting team, a team that has the ability to play fast in the full court, halfcourt,” Fernandez said last month. “The youth is always great, right, because that allows you to have a team for the long run. That’s what excites me the most, and to make players better.

Specifically, Lewis noted that two of the Brooklyn’s four new assistants have had “development” written on their recent resumes: Connor Griffin who’s bringing his Nuggets championship ring with him and Deividas Dulkys, who’s following Fernandez from Sacramento to Brooklyn.

Both are young and somewhat inexperienced. Griffin has worked as assistant video coordinator with the Nuggets for three years and before that was development coach at Pepperdine University. Dulkys, a native of basketball-mad Lithuania who played collegiately at Florida State, also has three year’s NBA coaching experience, one as an assistant with the Memphis Hustle, the Grizzlies’ G League affiliate. and two as the player development guru in Sacramento.

They are younger and decidedly less experienced that the two assistants they replace, Ronnie Burrell was G League coach of the year in 2022-23 and Will Weaver has been an assistant coach in Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Houston as well as successful head coach of the Sydney Kings in Australia’s NBL and Paris Basket in France’s Serie A league.

Steve Hetzel, who will be Fernandez’s lead assistant, is a 19-year NBA assistant. He was also head coach of the Cleveland Charge of the G League. Juwan Howard has head coaching experience at Michigan of course but certainly not the success that Kevin Ollie had at UConn.

The holdovers from Jacque Vaughn’s staff include Adam Caporn, the team’s development director last season, Jay Hernandez and Ryan Forehan-Kelly, both of whom have long NBA experience with developing young players. (Travis Bader, who was head video coordinator for the Nets, joined the coaching staff in a group photo a week ago at a Liberty game, but there’s no reporting on whether he will get an upgrade.)

So, for Fernandez, the buck stops at his office. There will be no coaching guru on hand to consult like there was three years ago when newbie Steve Nash hired Steve Clifford as a coaching consultant. None of this seems to bother Fernandez and it should be noted what the 41-year-old said was the most appealing parts of his new job, youth and development.

“The youth excites me,” Fernandez said. “When you have a young roster — and talented — that means that you’re going to have those guys for a long time. So you can develop them, and then they can perform at their best, and they’re here with you. So that’s extremely exciting, the flexibility that we’ll have, the resources that we have.

“We have a first-class owner, we have a first-class management group, front office. So if you put all that together, that’s a perfect recipe for success.”

As Lewis notes, those who know Fernandez best don’t believe he will have any problem moving over those 18 inches from where he sat last season next to Mike Brown.

“[Fernandez] has got a very strong player development background,” Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Mike Gansey told The Post. “When I became an intern with the Cavs, he was here, and seeing him every day work with players, how much the players love being around him, getting better with him.”

The other tea leaves that need sifted this week were poured in Shanghai, China, where Joe Tsai was attending a J.P. Morgan conference on China’s, um, development prospects and U.S.-China relations. The Alibaba executive chairman was suddenly asked about where Brooklyn stands in the NBA. Tsai’s answer, first reported by NetsPress, was that team is all about, yup, development, development, development.

“Brooklyn Nets is at a crossroads in a way,” Tsai told the J.P. Morgan questioner. “I think we are ... we didn’t do well as we expected last season. We didn’t make the playoffs, but we hope to revamp the team and make sure we can compete ... in the long run.”

Tsai gave no hint of what he and Sean Marks are planning this summer, but made it clear that he prefers a team built over the long term rather than “just winning now.”

“I think there’s a difference,” he continued. “I think when people ask owners what do you want to do with the basketball team. There’s a difference between ‘I want to win’ and ‘I want to build a winning mentality and a sustainable winning culture.’ Those are two very different things.

Tsai also seemed to express regrets about how Brooklyn built a superteam around Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden earlier this dedade. For some fans, Tsai’s comments indicated the Nets will abandon dreams of acquiring Donovan Mitchell or return to talks with the Houston Rockets: Mikal Bridges for draft picks BUT what Tsai said on May 24 is not so different from Sean Marks remarks to beat writers after the Fernandez press conference on April 24.

“We can take a variety of different pathways. We have to be prudent, patient, systematic with who we go after, when we go after them, and just make sure we do it the right way.” said Marks. He may not have used the term, “sustainable” as Tsai did, but the point’s the same.

“Doing it the right way” has many connotations for Nets fans or any other fans. One fan’s description of “sustainable” is another fan’s prescription for disaster.

Moreover, there are outside restrictions on what the Nets can do this off-season under the new CBA. Staying the course or blowing things up wouldn’t affect much. Bur moving on Mitchell or some other high-priced talent would run the Nets right up against the more draconian sanctions of the new CBA. If they go over the $171.3 million luxury tax threshold next season, it would mean virtually every contract they sign, virtually every trade they make through 2027-28 would be subject to the repeater tax. It would also deny them access to the the MLE, which will start at around $12.9 million and the bi-annual exception which goes for $4.5 million over those same four seasons.

If they reached the first apron of $178,7 million, which is admittedly unlikely, any trades they make would hamstring their future. Teams paying their players more than that next season could only trade for a player who makes up to the value of the salary they are dealing away. None of that 25% wiggle room anymore. Similarly, teams laboring under the first apron would have to give up access to any trade exceptions generated in the past year. TPEs would no longer be usable unless the team got back down below the apron. It’s a tough business.

Fans probably won’t have to wait too long to see what the Nets are planning. Historically, Sean Marks is busier than most GMs on Draft Night (or “nights” starting this year with this year’s bifurcation of the Draft into a two-night two-round affair.) We could even know sooner, considering what Evan Sidery of Forbes Sports wrote Monday that Dorian Finney-Smith is “a strong candidate to be traded from the Nets this offseason.” Sidery also suggested that teams previously expressing interest in DFS — the Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Memphis Grizzlies, Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns and Oklahoma City Thunder. —could return to the bidding. Coud

Tsai made his latest remarks about the Nets on Friday, as he did in two interviews last month is Oslo and at Yale during discussions about the Chinese economy and technology. We’re not saying he was sandbagged by the questions, but his answers were likely off-the-cuff. PR types don’t normally warn their bosses to expect questions about the NBA when the topic is far, far way ... in many regards.

Draft Sleeper of the Week

The NBA Draft is now a month away. As of Monday, there was no consensus on the overall No. 1 pick which, ICYMI, is held by the Atlanta Hawks (bet you had to think about it.) So if the mocks drafts are all unsettled about the overall No. 1, what does that means teams are still unsettled. What’s the situation beyond that? And where would the Nets pick? That latter question remains unanswered although it seems more and more likely we will see a record-breaking wave of trades as teams try to figure out which first rounder is likely to be worth the risk of paying a mediocre player good money in mediocre draft.

So all that said, who we got? Let’s work some parameters. Sean Marks has been unequivocal in saying he and his team will use the BPA strategy, aka Best Player Available. Also, it would seem that without a change or a big multi-player trade, the Nets are unlikely to be able to move too high, maybe the top of the second round. For fun, let’s add another parameter. the Nets target is an international player. (In other words, or end of the first. (tell me you’ve paid no attention to the Draft without telling me that you’ve paid no attention to the Draft but we have to write something!)

So here ya go, Bobi Klintman. ESPN has the 6’10” Swedish big who played in Australia, at No 23, NBADraft.net at 29 and Tankathon at 20. So he fits the upper end of the range. At 21, he’s also older than most picks and as ESPN’s Jonathan Givony has noted, Klintman “has some intriguing ingredients to develop long-term with his size, range and defensive playmaking ability.”

He also has played and not played in various venues both in the NCAA and Australia.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes Klintman’s history. After playing well in Sweden, he moved to Sunrise Christian Academy in Bel Aire, Kansas, one of those basketball finishing schools that dot the American Middle West and South. In today’s NCAA, with switching loyalties and the lure of hefty NIL’s, Klintman is the poster boy for indecision. He first committed, then de-committed from Maryland, committed and de-committed a second time, leaving Colorado in the lurch.

Next, he committed to Wake Forest and actually played for the Demon Deacons, averaging 5.3 points and 4.5 rebounds in 20.5 minutes per game. The young man’s indecision didn’t stop there. After the 2022-23 season, he declared, then un-declared for the Draft, and informed Wake he would join the Cairns Taipans of the NBL. He had a good but not sensational year averaging 9.7 points and 4.8 rebounds in 21.3 minutes while shooting 35.7% from deep. Here’s some video from last season. It would appear he projects as an NBA 3-and-D player.

One thing that might come into play with Klintman and others is whether he might be available in the second round. As a first rounder taken at, say No. 25, he’d be guaranteed $2.62 million next season then $2.75 million in 2025-26. His salary would count against the cap.

However, if he was drafted anywhere in second round, he’d likely wind up with a one-year, two-way deal. That $580,272 two-way deal would not count against the cap. That’s what the Nets did with Kessler Edwards and Jalen Wilson, their last two second rounders before converting them to standard deals at the end of their rookie season. When do we think the Nets will decide whether to acquire a pick? When either Woj gets word or Mark Tatum goes to the podium and intones, “:We have a trade...”

Liberty sells out in stages

Norman Oder of the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report misses very little and on Saturday he wrote about how the Liberty appears to have adopted a flexible policy towards opening the upper deck at Barclays Center. The Liberty opened the whole upper deck — 28 sections — on opening night when Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever were in town. The upper deck will also be open when the Fever come to Brooklyn on June 2 but Oder adds,

If so, those may be the only two regular-season sellouts, because, at least as of now, the Liberty isn’t selling all 28 Upper Deck sections for any other games.

However, 1) things can and often do change; and 2) the Liberty hope to perceive market demand, they will partially open the 28 upper deck sections. In the two cases Oder mentioned, all 28 will be open. In others, it will be a hodge podge with 23 or 13 or 11 or eight or just two sections open. The upper deck will be closed on some games as well. With more sections open on average, attendance should rise and prices should fall. “commensurate with more distant views,” as Oder writes, adding:

Either way, it looks like Liberty management is trying harder to maximize ticket revenue, all on the way to a hoped-for eventual billion-dollar valuation.

That’s what they do!

Meanwhile, there’s another sign of the times from the WNBA: the Liberty had a ABC TV audience of 17 million for their game vs the Fever and Clark at Barclays. That’s three million more than what Nets got in their highest rated national TV game last season, KD’s homecoming vs. the Phoenix Suns which drew 14 million.

Clara Wu Tsai is everywhere

Clara Wu Tsai is being honored by everyone, by the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation and the Harvard Business School, As producer/backer of Hell’s Kitchen, the Alicia Keys musical, she’s nominated for a Tony Award, one of 14 the Broadway blockbuster received. Wu Tsai also sat for an interview with HerMoney on how she runs the Liberty and made news in a speech by suggesting that within 10 years or less, the Liberty could be the first women’s sport team with a billion dollar valuation.

That was all in the past month!

It’s not just the quantity of honors, public appearances, interviews, etc. It’s their quality. Tsai is outspoken, of course, getting a lot of the credit for changing the WNBA’s policy of prohibiting charters for WNBA teams — and requiring some rather tall women to pay for upgrading their seats! She and Joe were willing to pay a half-million dollar fine as a matter of principle.

In both the HerMoney interview and the Harvard Business School’s acceptance speech, she was well out front, perhaps taking an opportunity to tell her fellow WNBA governors that that time’s a wasting, the moment and the platform is the WNBA’s, and there’s big money as well as milestones to be made. But only if you’re bold. There is, as Howard Megdal wrote in his seminal Sports Illustrated story on the WNBA, there’s a divide between the new governors like the Tsais and Marc Davis of the Aces and some old-line leaders ( the very ones who pushed for that fine or even worse penalties.)

In the HerMoney interview with writer Haley Paskalides, Wu Tsai also took a shot at the “previous owners” of the Liberty without naming said owners, a tailored diss of MSG and James Dolan as well as their former part owner and Liberty CEO Isiah Thomas.

“The previous owners for whatever reason, just decided that they didn’t want to invest anymore,” Wu Tsai said. “So they moved the team to play in Westchester County Center from Madison Square Garden. After we bought the team, the first thing we did was move the team back to New York City, to Barclays Center, where the Brooklyn Nets play.”

There was also a state-of-the-art locker room, big investments in player health and care, and Wu Tsai’s personal visit to Istanbul to recruit Breanna Stewart, who was named WNBA MVP in her first season with the Libs.

“There’s a whole team of people that we assembled to operate and execute on our vision,” Wu Tsai said. “This year, besides winning a championship, our goal is viewership. That’s very important from a business standpoint and of course, this is a business. One of the things I really want to do is show that women’s professional sports can be profitable.”

Wu Tsai spoke as well about three personal initiatives, each very different, that she is most associated with, initiatives where she had a pioneering role. Two of them are well-known. The first is the Brooklyn Social Justice Fund to help both non-profit and for-profit companies make their way in New York’s competitive markets. The second is the Meek Mill-inspired Reform Alliance, which works with states to change the nation’s parole and probation system. One source tells NetsDaily that the Tsais gave $8 million to the alliance.

The least known of the three is another “alliance,” the Wu Tsai Performance Alliance, which studies peak performance in athletes at various universities and institutes to see how the lessons of their bodies and minds can be translated to a broader scale. For Wu Tsai, the initiative had to have a special women’s health component to help Liberty players but more importantly, women in general.

“One of the exciting things we found is 40 sex-related differences in gene expression after exercise,” Wu Tsai told HerMoney. “So something like that is going to lead to female-related therapies and training regimens. And I think that’s really going to change the game for the way females prepare for success in their sport.” The Tsais have agreed to commit $220 million to the performance alliance, according to various reports.

So ... is it fair to suggest that there is some public relations strategy at work here? Are we so cynical to suggest that Clara is becoming more prominent while Joe, for a variety of reasons, has retreated, at least from the public eye.

Indeed, Wu Tsai has escaped a lot of the bad vibes husband Joe gets hammered for, whether it be U.S.-China relations or the team formerly known as the Big Three. The Liberty, she confirmed to HerMoney, is her team, a contender for the WNBA Finals again. The Nets are his team ... and, well, see above. Of course, there are shared responsibilities in every marriage, even when the couple are billionaires, sports team owners, and often separated by an ocean or two.

But Joe Tsai’s social media output the last six months has declined, his presence more low-key than at any time in his five years as Nets governor He’s only attended a few games at Barclays Center and he has not tweeted, FaceBooked or Instagrammed about the team in six months. For a while there, he wasn’t tweeting at all. Now in the last few weeks, he’s posted about his children, the Liberty and his various lacrosse interests, even his high school’s national lacrosse championship!

Still, no Nets.

Part of his retreat on social media, maybe most of it, is the result of him being elevated to the job of executive chair at Alibaba, the world’s largest (by some measures) e-commerce company with three times the number of deliveries as Amazon. It was more than a corporate decision, with China’s economy needing a healthy e-commerce component to regain some lost ground as political superpower.

Still, it’s hard not to notice that this is Clara Wu Tsai’s moment. And She’s taking full measure of the platform that comes with it.

Final Note

Bill Walton lived a great life, winning at every level of the sport he loved. He was great as a man, willing to take a few minutes to talk with fans of the game he loved. Sometimes, it’s just that simple. Rest in peace, Mr. Walton.