Why the Nets are hurt most by Marvin Bagley’s decision to leave high school early

Heralded high school basketball prospect Marvin Bagley made the decision to forego his senior year to join the Duke Blue Devils next season, vaulting the star forward into the cream of the crop of the 2018 NBA draft class.

Bagley’s decision is one that fast tracks his journey to NBA stardom. It also simultaneously piles onto the Brooklyn Nets’ never-ending list of misfortunes. The Nets could have taken Bagley high in the 2019 NBA draft with their own pick. But now that he’s reclassified and left for Duke, he’ll likely be in the 2018 class, when Brooklyn’s pick belongs to the Celtics.

Remember: Prior to the current Sean Marks and Kenny Atkinson regime, the Nets were run by GM Billy King and an impatient owner in Mikhail Prokhorov. They executed a deal that brought aging Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to Brooklyn in 2013. But in exchange for short-lived success, the Nets sent a slew of draft picks to Boston, including swap rights on what turned into the No. 1 overall pick in 2017 (Markelle Fultz) and their unprotected first-round pick in 2018.

Brooklyn was expected to have hope in 2019 and beyond. They own all their draft picks after the upcoming draft, and Bagley — a franchise-altering talent who was a high school junior up until Sunday night — was projected to be available in two years.

Bagley had enough high school credits to graduate after his junior year. He followed the reclassification footsteps of Andre Drummond, among others, who skipped his senior year in 2011 to hoop at UConn before entering the 2012 NBA draft.

The 18-year-old forward is now projected to be a top-three pick in the looming 2018 draft, joining a stacked class that already includes Michael Porter Jr., Luka Doncic, DeAndre Ayton, and Mohamed Bamba. And because of that fateful trade years ago, it’ll be the Celtics — not the Nets — in line to benefit from Bagley’s reclassification, assuming he’s a one-and-done as everyone expects.

If the 2018 draft class is a fully loaded plate of nachos, the 2019 talent pool is ostensibly a box of chocolates, because you don’t know what you’ll get.

R.J. Barrett is the high school star carrying Canadian basketball on his shoulders. By now, you’ve seen what the high-flying Zion Williamson is capable of doing. New prospects emerge by the month, and just like Bagley reclassified a year ahead, other high schoolers can do the same.

But on its surface, the 2019 class is tangibly weaker than 2018’s, and Bagley — its biggest star — is no longer in the fold.

The Nets have found ways to improve without their draft picks. Brooklyn established a makeshift young core by trading for Caris LeVert, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, and Isaiah Whitehead, then by landing D’Angelo Russell, the lottery pick the Nets never had.

But Bagley is a once-in-a-lifetime talent once projected to be available when the Nets regained their own first-round pick in 2019. Now, barring a disastrous freshman year at Duke, his reclassification moves him into the 2018 draft class.

While that’s a great move for Bagley, his family, and his brand, it’s another miss for the Nets. They desperately needed a big win to compete with the rest of the league — a win the Celtics robbed them of years ago.

This is the end of the havoc Boston wreaked on Brooklyn as a byproduct of the trade, though. And although the Nets will strike out on Marvin Bagley next summer, at least Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett should be available in 2019.