WASHINGTON — The Nets and Wizards will take the floor Saturday night at Verizon Center with fifth place in the Eastern Conference standings on the line.
But the game also provides an interesting snapshot at the butterfly effect of the events that took place on May 18, 2010 in Secaucus, N.J., just a few miles away from the Meadowlands, where the Nets were coming off a dreadful 12-70 season that saw them entering the lottery with the best chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick.
The clear-cut top prospect in the draft that year was John Wall, the standout point guard from Kentucky, and the Nets hoped to land the top pick to make him the face of the franchise, pairing him with Brook Lopez as the foundation of the team’s rebuilding effort in preparation of moving to Brooklyn in 2012.
But instead of the Nets getting the top pick, that honor instead went to the Wizards, who jumped from the fifth-best chance to win the lottery and the right to take Wall.
So what might have happened if the Nets had won the right to draft Wall instead?
2010
The Nets would have chosen Wall, and also acquired Damion James, a small forward out of Texas, with the 24th pick, shipping the draft rights to Jordan Crawford and Tibor Pleiss to Atlanta, though a pair of foot injuries eventually led to the Nets deciding to not pick up his third-year option on his contract, and he became a free agent after the 2011-12 season .
2011
Without Wall, the Nets drafted power forward Derrick Favors from Georgia Tech, whom general manager Billy King later traded — along with Devin Harris, the Nets’ 2011 pick and the Warriors’ top-seven protected 2012 pick — to the Jazz for Deron Williams on Feb. 23, 2011.
That deal has worked out well for the Nets, as Williams became a building block of the team’s turnaround over the last couple of seasons, and was the kind of star the team was looking for as it moved into Barclays Center. But with Wall, the Nets would have been looking to build around him instead.
The Nets would have kept the third pick in the draft. The top available prospects were both centers, so we’ll give them Tristan Thompson, who went a pick later to the Cavaliers and could have slotted in next to Lopez. The Nets also made a trade late in the first round with the Celtics to acquire MarShon Brooks, and another to land the rights to Croatian small forward Bojan Bogdanovic, who could have come over the following season after playing for Fenerbahce Ulker in Turkey the previous two years.
2012
Removing the Williams trade from the equation, the Nets would have gone into this draft with the potential for three different first-round picks — their own, along with those belonging to the Warriors and Rockets — which was lottery-protected. But both Golden State and Houston wound up keeping their picks, meaning the Nets only had the sixth pick.
The Nets wound up trading their selection to Portland for a top-three protection in order to obtain Gerald Wallace, a pick the Trail Blazers later used to draft Damian Lillard. Because the Nets already had Wall they wouldn’t have needed Lillard, so we’ll say they took small forward Harrison Barnes, who was ranked in this range and was on the board at the time.
2013
If things worked out the same way, the Nets would have wound up with three picks in this year’s draft, getting both the Rockets’ (18th overall) — which they wound up trading the rights to for Joe Johnson the prior summer — along with the Warriors’ (21st) and their own (22nd). With Russian prospect Sergey Karasev on the board for the first pick, we’ll make him the selection at No. 18, while we’ll move up Mason Plumlee one spot to No. 21 and then, to have some fun, we’ll give the Nets Tim Hardaway Jr. — who they brought in the week of the draft for a workout — with the 22nd pick.
That would have given the Nets a starting five of Wall, Hardaway, Jr., Barnes, Thompson and Lopez, as well as Brooks, Karasev and Plumlee on the bench, with the potential to add Bogdanovic this summer as well as other free agents.
It’s not a better future, necessarily, and there’s certainly the potential other subsequent moves could have happened over the past four years to change this outlook significantly. But it’s certainly but a different one than if the lottery ping-pong balls had bounced differently four years ago.