Nets GM Sean Marks has sights set on draft during West Coast trip

SALT LAKE CITY — The Nets are on the longest road trip of their season.And the most important. But perhaps not in the way many think. The trades of Dennis Schroder and Dorian Finney-Smith doubled down on the Nets’ commitment to building through the draft.

And this marathon six-game trek may have an outsize impact on their positioning for that all-important lottery. “We’re building this, and we’re building this for hopefully sustainable success,” Nets GM Sean Marks told The Post.“That’s what we want.

We want to get to that. “We’re going to have to be systematic with some of the decisions we make.And they may not always be in line with winning the next game or putting the most talent out there.” Less than a month ago, the Nets had Schroder and Finney-Smith and were sitting in the 15th draft position, with no chance at even a top-four pick. But Brooklyn (13-25) has dropped seven of eight, and the past four by a combined 77 points.

Now the Nets have the sixth-best odds in the lottery, with a 37.2 percent chance of getting inside the top four and 9 percent chance of landing the top overall pick. “To be frank, you’ve still got to get a little lucky.We all know that,” Marks told The Post.

“The hot-button topic has always been the draft.We all know we’ve still got to get lucky.

At the end of the day, the Ping-Pong balls are going to drop a certain way.” The Nets came into the weekend a half-game ahead of the seventh-place Trail Blazers in the lottery standings, and three behind the fifth-place Jazz. Brooklyn’s next two tilts? Sunday in Utah, and Tuesday in Portland. It’s obvious how important the games could be to those Ping-Pong balls. “They’re doing exactly what they should be doing,” a Western Conference scout told The Post.  Sign up for Inside the Nets by Brian Lewis, exclusively on Sports+.Please provide a valid email address.

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