The Brooklyn Nets and Philadelphia 76ers recently met in a matinee matchup that gave rise and context to their divergent paths as both try to rebuild. The game itself was almost a microcosm of the philosophy each side has employed to get back to the contender status. Brooklyn led early, but Philadelphia’s young talent rose to the occasion and took home a largely meaningless win, outside of draft position trackers.

Philadelphia’s track is well chronicled and has been the subject of much debate. Whether or not you agreed with Sam Hinkie’s tear it down to the studs approach or not, you can hardly argue its effectiveness. The 76ers are now among one of the more fun teams to watch, loaded with young talent around burgeoning superstar Joel Embiid. They are clearly on their way up. They have young talent, own all of their own draft picks and several from other teams to continue to add to the talent base, have no bad contracts and seem poised to make a major leap within the next year or so. 

While Bryan Colangelo inherited a rebuilding franchise with a loaded asset base, the Nets are a case study in how to rebuild when you have next to nothing. Billy King, in a move that has been torn apart repeatedly, made what proved to be an ill-fated decision to add win-now talent to a good but not great team by mortgaging all of Brooklyn’s future draft capital. Hindsight affords us the ability to see things far more clearly and the move was obviously a mistake of epic proportions. The Nets never made the climb to title contender and the older players they chose to build around all moved on after just two seasons together. King himself didn’t even survive the failure, fired last year as penance for putting together this disaster. 

By going all in, the Nets committed themselves to an unfortunate and uncertain future. Had it worked, they may have been able to add pieces around their aging stars to carry the franchise forward. But it didn’t work. Brooklyn was left without their own draft picks for four out of five years, an oft-injured max player and no young talent of significance to build around. Not exactly a job that stands out to GM candidates and coaches as the place to go launch their careers. Yet, that is exactly what Sean Marks and Kenny Atkinson chose to do.

Imagine walking into your office and being told to lead the company to prosperity, only there is really nothing to work with. No computers, no products to sell, no inventory coming and a bunch of your employees don’t really want to be there. And then to be told that was all you would have for the foreseeable future and to make it work. That is kind of the situation Marks and Atkinson walked into. This wasn’t a 76ers’ world where they could trade off older players for draft picks, knowing they could pair those picks with their own picks and start “The Process”. Most would have said “thanks, but no thanks”, especially those who are just getting started as the top dogs in an organization, but both Marks and Atkinson have embraced the challenge.

Marks was well-respected as a 13-year role player, including 11 of those years in the NBA. Never a star or even a starter, Marks carved out a role as a practice player who pushed the players in front of him and did the dirty work asked of him when he did play. He impressed the Spurs enough with his smarts and dedication that they hired him to work in their front office when he retired. The decision to join San Antonio launched his career as an executive, as it has for other many smart basketball people.

Atkinson was a grinder as a coach. He worked his way up from behind the scenes to bench roles with New York and Atlanta. He became renowned for his player development ability to push players to get the most from sometimes limited skill sets. He was a key cog in “Hawks University” that has taken in undervalued wings and turned them into borderline All-Stars.

Marks and Atkinson linking up in Brooklyn is hardly a surprise. Marks is directly from the Spurs front office and Atkinson worked under Mike Budenholzer, a Gregg Popovich/R.C. Buford protégé. When Marks was offered the top job leading the Nets, he reached into the family tree and hired the best available candidate in Atkinson.

With their two leaders in place, Brooklyn began the process of figuring out how to rebuild out of the crater left from the previous regime. Marks and Atkinson started where all smart people should start and surveyed the roster. Marks actually got a bit of a head start, having been hired as last season was winding down. In short order, Marks convinced his bosses that eating the remainder of the contracts for Joe Johnson and Andrea Bargnani were the best moves and both were gone within a week of taking the job. This was a signal of bigger things to come.

When you approach a bad situation that is bereft of resources, you have to quickly determine what previous decisions had led to sunk costs and what can still be salvaged. Johnson and Bargnani were the first examples of Marks’ decision making abilities. Brooklyn was going nowhere in the standings and it was time to move on from veterans who had no future with the Nets. The next example was perhaps more startling in its execution, but a sign that Marks and Atkinson are on the same page and in this for the long haul. 

Many looked at Brooklyn and surmised that with cap space for the first times in ages and without their own draft picks, that the Nets would make a play to be as good as possible over the next few years. The Nets' leadership tandem made the decision that the picks Brooklyn owes Boston are a sunk cost. Boston isn’t giving them back and there isn’t anything Brooklyn can do about that now. And to mortgage the future just to avoid giving another team a good pick would just be repeating the mistakes of the past.

At the NBA Draft, the Nets signaled their intentions by moving on from productive veteran Thaddeus Young for a pick that turned out to be Caris LeVert. LeVert was coming off a foot injury and faced an uncertain start to his career, but Brooklyn felt he was the best value on the board. There would be no fast track rebuild for Brooklyn.

In free agency, the Nets went in on veterans who could help them grown and win, but on reasonable contracts. Jeremy Lin, Trevor Booker, Luis Scola, Randy Foye and Greivis Vasquez all came on board for money that was more than fair for players of their caliber. Instead of keeping Young and spending money on a bigger name free agent that might have pushed them higher in the standings, but may have also tied up the cap sheet, Brooklyn is playing a balancing act. They aren’t tanking, because there is no point when they don’t have their picks, but they aren’t taking shortcuts back to the playoffs either. They’ll win as much as they can, while keeping their cap sheet clean and recouping assets where and when they can.

While the merits and morality of Hinkie's methods have been discussed ad nauseum, Brooklyn has gone largely under the radar. Some questioned the strategy of not signing better players. Others don’t understand why they haven’t traded Brook Lopez or Bojan Bogdanovic for whatever they can get and moved on. But largely, outside of Celtics fans who obsessively track Brooklyn’s W/L record, people have ignored the Nets and will check back in later when they matter again.

The Nets are reportedly willing to trade both Lopez and Bogdanovic, but are said to have placed a high price on both players. With so many more buyers than sellers at this point in the season, Brooklyn is right to ask for a lot. The market will change over the next month or so and so will the asking price. But don’t expect the Nets to just give away either player. As Marks and Atkinson have done from the jump, they’ll make whatever decision is in the best interest of the franchise for both the short and long term.

There is no set formula for rebuilding in the NBA. Every situation is different and highly depends on a lot of factors, some of which have nothing to do with basketball. Do you have an ownership group that can stomach a full scale teardown like Philadelphia? Will your fan base stick around? Do you have to push for the playoffs as quickly as possible? And what is your situation like cap and draft pick-wise? The best rebuilds happen when a team sets a course and sticks with it. Trying to take shortcuts almost never works, and often leaves the team in just as bad as, if not worse, shape than before.

Both teams are taking different routes, with Philadelphia’s path slightly closer to its terminus. Whether it makes all the difference remains to be seen, but both should be lauded for taking the ones less traveled by.