MORE NBA: Nets get Kansas guard. Page 90
THE NETS’ ho-hum draft ended Thursday night with three late second-round picks. There was a local point guard, two EuroStash forwards and little hope for immediate impact.
The Nets weren’t expecting to get much help from the draft, and the night lived up to expectations.
GM Billy King had hopes of trading into the first round but admitted the price was too steep. Teams were looking for future picks, he said, not $3 million of Mikhail Prokhorov’s money.
So King’s first move was purchasing the 41st pick from the Trail Blazers, and then choosing Kansas guard Tyshawn Taylor, a Hoboken product and third team All-American with a high turnover rate.
He then bought the 54th pick from the 76ers for Georgian forward Tornike Shengelia, who is expected to spend a couple years progressing i n Europe before joining the Nets. They then drafted Turkish forward Ilkan Karaman three picks later, also for stash purposes. The Nets, who have the rights to three players contracted to European teams, didn’t own their first-round pick (sixth overall) because it was traded in March for Gerald Wallace.
Taylor, a 22-year-old senior, will get his chance to earn a spot on a team with just four players guaranteed to be under contract next season. Taylor, who is nonguaranteed, averaged 16.6 points, 4.8 assists and 3.5 turnovers last season for the Jayhawks, who advanced to the NCAA final. The Nets had three point guards on last season’s roster, all of whom could become free agents, including Jordan Farmar, who has until Sunday to decide if he’s picking up his one-year player option.
Meanwhile, the Nets’ star point guard and main focus of the offseason, Deron Williams, was riding around with Jason Kidd in the Hamptons on Thursday, teasing fans and doing his best to fan the speculation flames.
The golfing buddies — and, not coincidentally, free-agent buddies — posed for a picture together, smiling, hours before their respective teams were navigating through the draft with limited resources.
“Just finished playing East Hampton Golf Club w/ (Kidd) let the speculation begin?????” Williams tweeted. Cheeky. Theoretically, the Brooklyn Nets could’ve been knee-deep in rebuilding mode — boasting a pair of third overall picks and this year’s sixth overall.
Instead, the Nets — who have a 58-162 combined record in the last three seasons — own the rights to none of their own firstround picks from the last three drafts.
It’s still about Williams. Most of the moves of the last two years were made to acquire and keep him, and Thursday was more of the aftermath. Building from the draft is not part of the plan.