The pro-tank crowd is all up in arms that the [Brooklyn Nets](https://www.netsdaily.com) are not losing games fast enough as the season ends and the NBA starts looking online for the best ping pong balls money can buy.
Some have suggested Jordi Fernandez take a leave of absence! Bring back Jacque Vaughn maybe? For them, it’s all about getting the best odds possible going into May 12, but the Brooklyn Nets are not cooperating to the level these amateur GMs demand.
Of course, players and their coaches don’t tank. It’s not in their DNA. You don’t get to be one of the top 500 players in the world, maybe the top 5,000 ever, without having a hyperactive competitive gene. And [as Steve Lichtenstein writes Wednesday](https://stevelichtenstein.substack.com/p/despite-fans-tanking-wishes-nets), with the Nets, there is an added factor: the players, particularly the younger ones, are playing for their lives.
> The Nets will keep playing as if their professional lives depend on it…because it does.
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> Only four members of the Nets’ current roster (Cam Johnson, Nic Claxton, and sophomores Noah Clowney and Dariq Whitehead) have full guaranteed contracts for next season. Keon Johnson (approximately $270,000) and Maxwell Lewis ($100,000) have relatively small partial guarantees, according to Spotrac.com. Tosan Evbuomwan, a two-way player on a two-year contract, doesn’t count in roster and salary cap calculations.
So don’t count on players to give up their chance at a better life just to move the franchise’s chances at capturing the Flagg from 10.5% to 12.0%. No one is that self-less. And as the editor of Steve’s Newsletter adds, all those players are college educated and understand that the organization (currently) have four first rounders and a high second rounder in the upcoming draft, all but the second rounder guaranteed a two-year NBA contract. There are only so many spots on an NBA roster.
> Though I’d speculate that it’s the lowest-probability scenario, let’s assume that the Nets take all five rookies into training camp in September. Add that to the four other fully-guaranteed players and all of a sudden the number of open roster spots dwindles to six...
That leaves nine players plus DeAnthony Melton, who’s out for the season and not with the team, with jobs on the line. Cam Thomas should be back, Lichtenstein writes, but other than that, things are fluid. He goes, player by player, in assessing their futures and offers other scenarios that could affect the roster. Bottom line, though, as he writes, is that players on the current roster “have 13 games remaining to audition for a job, any NBA job, next season.”
Moreover, Lichtenstein notes, Jordi Fernandez apparently recognizes this and unlike other teams in the same position, is giving players opportunities.
> Fernandez has done outstanding work in getting these players to buy into a team concept when some in their positions might feel motivated to look out for No. 1 and prioritize getting their individual stats up first...
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> Fernandez could pull the garbage other clubs are using and bench his better players like Cam Johnson, Claxton, and Russell in crunch time to abet the tank, but the Nets evidently see value in maintaining this competitive spirit, understanding that they’ll still lose plenty of games based on their own talent deficiencies.
Not to mention that they’re also leading the NBA in injuries, with more than 300 player/games lost.
Success in the NBA is not just based on where ping pong balls fall in mid-May. A big part of it, one which doesn’t get a lot of attention, is how players see the _organization._ “Ethical tanking” may very well be part of that.