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.
In seventh, the Nets’ odds would fall to 32.0 percent for the top four and 7.5 percent for the top overall pick. Climb to fifth, and those improve to 48.1 percent and 12.5 percent.
The Nets will face a Utah team playing on the second night of a back-to-back, having been at Phoenix on Saturday. But the Jazz have won two of their prior four and have three straight winnable games, one versus the Hornets (fourth in the lottery seedings) and two against the Pelicans (second in the seedings).
Then Brooklyn heads to Portland to face a Blazers squad that had won four of eight before Saturday’s tilt against the Heat.
This trip started with a loss in Denver, and after these next two games continues with the Clippers, Lakers and Thunder. It’s not only Brooklyn’s longest of the season, but just one shy of the longest in the entire NBA for 2024-25.
“We’ve got to focus on just getting better,” Ben Simmons said. “We can’t really focus on all the games coming up. We’ve got focus day at a time and just getting better. We’ve got to keep improving, watch film and try to get better. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it’s something we’ve just got to be focused on.”
Jordi Fernandez echoed those sentiments.
“I don’t think we want to be thinking, ‘Oh, this is a long road trip.’ No … once [one game] is over, then we’ll think about the next team,” Fernandez said. “That’s the mentality we have. Keep getting better, getting healthier, working with the new groups we have now on the court. And that’s what I want to see, that competitiveness, development. That’s the things we’re working on.”
For a rebuilding team, that means developing young players such as Noah Clowney, Keon Johnson and others.
“We know it’s gonna be a long road trip,” Johnson said. “We’re all over the place. But just locking in one day at a time and taking it one game at a time is the best way we can go about it, because we’re limited, just with a few guys. But that’s besides the point. The opportunity’s there for a lot of guys, so just being able to take advantage of the moment, this in front of us right now.”