Nets NBA draft options coming into focus as lottery draws near

The college basketball season ended on Monday.Next month the Nets rebuild starts in earnest, with the lottery — and clarity on just where they’ll be drafting.The Nets have five picks in June’s NBA draft — four first-rounders and their own natural second — and after the Big Dance, mock drafts have been readjusted and rejiggered based on how the players performed and how the scouts assessed them.They’ll change again, based on the draft combine, predraft workouts and of course front office misdirection.

But in the immediate aftermath of post-Final Four recalibration, some things are clear.The most common projection for the Nets’ prized lottery selection is either Jeremiah Fears or Khaman Maluach, while the player most often mocked to them overall is Yaxel Lendeborg.“We have a very important summer, as you know,” Nets coach Jordi Fernández understated before Tuesday’s 119-114 win against fellow lottery hopeful New Orleans.

“We have four firsts and one second.We’re not going to know where the lottery is going to fall, because that’s part of the odds and so on and so forth.

You can only control what you can control, and right now, that is what we know for sure.”The all-important lottery is May 12 in Chicago, right in the middle of the draft combine.The Nets could’ve clinched no worse than sixth in the lottery seedings with a loss Tuesday.If that’s where they finish, they’d have a 50.3 percent chance of drafting either seventh (29.8) or eighth (20.5), and 37.2 percent at landing in the top four.All other outcomes would be long shots.

And with that lottery pick, most mocks have them selecting either Maluach or Fears.Maluach — a 7-foot-2, 250-pound defensive game-changer — was tabbed to go to Brooklyn by both Tankathon and SB Nation.

The freshman from Duke — who is from South Sudan, and could face deportation under President Donald Trump’s new policies — is just 18 and only started playing five years ago.“It’s just a test...