The NBA trade deadline has come and gone. Contenders buffed out their scratches, owners ducked their taxes, and now, Tank Season awaits the rest of us serfs. With two months left in the regular season,
injury reports and funky substitution patterns provoke cries for Adam Silver and essays questioning whether Giannis Antetokounmpo publicly embracing Kalshi as a shareholder is a greater threat to the NBA’s integrity than Keshon Gilbert getting 29 minutes in a regular-season game for the Washington Wizards. It’s a dark, confusing world out there.
But at least it’s funny. Few sporting events capture this like a true NBA Tank-Off, so shameless and so absurd, with its participants forbidden from acknowledging it as such. World-class athletes not just concerned fans praying for them to turn the ball over and miss shots, but their bosses too. Would NBA League Pass really be worth it without this perverse spectacle?
On Saturday afternoon, the 14-36 Wizards held up their end of the bargain. Forget some legitimately injured vets like Anthony Davis and Trae Young, they put ten guys on the injury report. Bilal Coulibaly, Alex Sarr, and Kyshawn George were questionable with injury, and none of them played. At the very least, the Wiz had the excuse of a back-to-back (facing the Miami Heat on Sunday) and four wins in their last six tries.
The 13-37 Brooklyn Nets did not, and they did not partake in the calculated fun. They handed in their cleanest injury report of the season; even trade acquisitions Josh Minott and Ochai Agbaji were available, though neither played. Perhaps Brooklyn didn’t learn their lesson from last season…
Maybe ownership believes you can’t turn the tank up to ten before the All-Star break. Maybe Michael Porter Jr.‘s knee is 100% fine and they didn’t want a call from the league office, maybe they thought there was no way to lose to the skeleton-crew Wizards. Maybe, they just wanted Jordi Fernández to see his team play well.
“While we’re not changing, you have to play hard and with purpose,” said Fernández pregame. “If we find that balance, we’ll see a competitive group. It’s not that hard, you just have to be committed. Lately we haven’t found those two things together.”
On Saturday, the Nets were finally on the other side of a lopsided first quarter. The hosts led 46-20, then 80-47 by halftime. Of course, it marked their highest point-total in any half this season, and Fernández got what he wanted: “I mean, playing extremely hard and with purpose. I thought we, like you said, found ways to score the ball. And I think that second group had a great thing going, from defense to offense, running the floor, doing the right things. And I think that group, if you look all the way through, that’s the one that gave us the win.”
Fernández isn’t lying. Michael Porter Jr. led the team in scoring with 23 points on 8-of-16 shooting, and Nolan Traore played well in another start, putting up 15/3/4 on 6-of-7 shooting with one lone turnover, but it was the bench that truly embarrassed Washington. To no surprise, the fringe NBA players off their bench couldn’t handle Day’Ron Sharpe, who mauled his way to 19/9/4.
Nor could they handle Sharpe’s partner in the front-court, Danny Wolf. The two were attached at the hip on Saturday, sharing all their minutes together. Wolf dropped 16/7/6, with three of those assists to Sharpe down low.
The rookie was highly complimentary of the vet, postgame: “He’s playing 20 minutes, and he’s giving you 19/9/4, I don’t know how many bigs in the NBA are doing that. I think his superpower is rebounding, right? And a lot of his points come off put-backs, and you might just look at that as an easy bucket, but it’s not easy to do … As you play with someone more, you’re gonna get that confidence in one another, and you’re gonna learn to play off each other, and it makes the game so much easier for everybody.”
Wolf stole the show, though. He made two threes and shot 7-of-11 without a turnover, all of his problem areas becoming strengths at least for one shining afternoon. Most importantly, Wolf seemed calmer, more self-assured than Nets fans have seen him for months. Not coincidentally, without Traore or Cam Thomas in the backcourt, he had the ball in his hands much more.
Said Wolf: “The last month, two months, it’s just a lot of learning. I was playing off the ball, and for me, it’s just like everything felt — I felt a little bit too sped up, and there’s gonna be games where that’s my role. And then when coach does give me the ball and trust me with it, it’s on me to make the right play.”
Egor Dëmin only had four points, going 0-of-5 from three. Still, the rest of the rookies all had shining moments, whether it was an athletic finish from Drake Powell at the rim, a fast-break dunk for Ben Saraf, or this sexy Traore bucket…
The Wizards hit some 3-pointers in the final third of the game, and as a result, Brooklyn’s starters somehow ended up losing their minutes … not that it really mattered. Washington almost almost made it a game, but thanks to Brooklyn’s big bench, the game was over long before halftime.
The Nets shot an incomprehensible 69.8% inside the arc on Saturday; if they had gotten hot from deep, they would’ve put up 150 points. If they were gonna disregard the Tank-Off and win, at least they did it in style.
We’ll see if the NBA Draft Lottery gods reward them for their nobility on May 10.
Final Score: Brooklyn Nets 127, Washington Wizards 113
