NetsDaily Off-Season Report - No. 13

Yeah, we didn’t post an Off-Season Report last weekend. We were so excited by our visit to Barclays Center for the Liberty-Dream game — and meeting Ellie — that we sorta forgot. So we’ll try to make up for it this week.

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Summer League is over. The Nets, following their historic draft, finished 1-4, their only win a close one over the 0-5 Orlando Magic. Still, there were moments and some surprises. Who among us (how about none?) expected Egor Demin to wind up as the best 3-point volume shooter

— 43.5% on 7.7 3-point attempts — in Summer League while registering four assists in three games? (By comparison, Dylan Harper shot 12.5% from deep and Jeremiah Fears 18.2%.)

And Drew Timme! As historical data gathered by RealGM shows, the 6’10” Timme ranks seventh ALL-TIME in Summer League scoring at 25.3 per game to go along with 8.0 rebounds and 2.7 assists. FYI, Cam Thomas ranks third on that list.

Danny Wolf, taken at No. 27, and Nolan Traore, at No. 19, looked good in moments but Ben Saraf, the No. 26 pick, did not ... not that it mattered much. Drake Powell, taken at No. 22, didn’t play. So we’ll have to wait and see on him.

And we are still struggling with pronouncing Demin, Traore and Saraf’s last names. It will take a while. (We’re good with Wolf and Powell.)

Perhaps the biggest takeaway was not how well Demin did on the court. but mature is. At 19 years old, he looked like a leader-in-waiting on the court and in interviews, the most recent and longest of which was the one he did Friday during the Sixers game when he didn’t play:

Smooth. After a year at BYU, he seems to be well on his way to becoming a go-to voice despite his youth. Hoping the constant losing doesn’t get to him. That is always a danger with young players who’ve grown up in winning programs then have to face stretches without any wins.

There were other players who looked good despite limited resumes. Tyrese Samuel who played his college ball at Seton Hall and Florida got an opportunity and the 25-year-old took advantage of it. In the Sixers game, the 6’10” big scored 19 points on 8-of-10 shooting, including 1-of-2 from deep, grabbed 12 rebounds, five of them offensive and handed out two assists while blocking a shot. He finished with averages of 11.7 points and 6.3 boards in 17 minutes. Grant Nelson in extended minutes vs. Philly put up 11 points. He already has a training camp invite, per Michael Scotto.

Which brings us to roster math again. Here’s the latest after the Draft and two plus weeks of free agency:

GUARANTEED STANDARD NBA CONTRACTS (10):

• Michael Porter Jr., 27
• Nic Claxton, 26
• Terance Mann, 28
• Noah Clowney, 21
• Dariq Whitehead, 20
• Egor Demin, 19
• Nolan Traore, 19
• Drake Powell, 19
• Ben Saraf, 19
• Danny Wolf, 21

NON-GUARANTEED NBA CONTRACTS (4)

• Keon Johnson, 23
• Jalen Wilson, 25
• Tyrese Martin, 26
• Drew Timme, 25

Johnson and Wilson are partially guaranteed. They’ll receive $271,000 (Johnson) and $88,000 (Wilson) if cut.

RESTRICTED FREE AGENTS (3)

• Cam Thomas, 23
• Day’Ron Sharpe, 23
• Ziaire Williams, 23

Sharpe and Williams have reportedly agreed to identical, two-year $12.0 million deals with the second year a team option.

NON-GUARANTEED TWO-WAYS (2)

• Tosan Evbuowan, 24
• Tyson Etienne, 26

That’s 19 players total, two short of what NBA teams can bring into camp which for the Nets will begin the last week of September as they try to get a head start on their China trip. BUT with four non-guaranteed minimum deals and two non-guaranteed two-ways, there is plenty of wiggle room. While a lot of the focus on Jake Fischer’s reporting Friday was on Cam Thomas status, The Steinline contributor also dropped this:

Brooklyn has been active on the trade front instead, finally shipping out long-pursued sharpshooter Cam Johnson, acquiring Michael Porter Jr. and Terance Mann and adding both the No. 22 overall pick in last month’s draft (which was used on Drake Powell) and Denver’s unprotected 2032 first-round pick in the Johnson-for-Porter deal.

“Active on the trade front,” you say. Hmmm. Fischer didn’t identify any possibilities but with somewhere between $22 and $28 million in cap space remaining, depending on that wiggle room, Nets can still take on salary dumps and get a return in draft assets ... but what kind?

The market, seemingly, is limited as teams fill out their rosters, but there are reports that other clubs are still in the market. For example, there’s been multiple reports the Suns are marketing two 30-somethings with big contracts: Grayson Allen who’s owed $54.4 million over the next three, the final year a player option, and old friend Royce O’Neale who’s owed $32.6 million over that same span, all of it guaranteed. It would appear that the Nets would have no positional need for either and the Allen contract is indeed worth dumping if you’re the Suns. Phoenix has little to offer in return though. (No, we’re not advocating for either, just citing an example.)

Indeed, Yossi Gozlan of capsheets.com and the Third Apron podcast believes that at this point in the calendar the Nets return in salary dumps is more likely to be first round swaps and/or second rounders (of which the Nets already have 18 over the next seven years) than first rounders.

It’s also hard to believe that rival teams are going to give up much if anything in the 2026 NBA Draft. Brooklyn currently has one first and two seconds next year in a draft that looks to be as good as this year’s was supposed to be. Should Sean Marks & co. have tried to consolidate some of their picks to move? Did they try and get rebuffed? We don’t know, but there’s plenty of time to add picks at the deadline or before the Draft when as we know the Nets GM is often busy.

There’s also plenty of time to assess the Nets overall off-season, but much of the pundit class thinks the Nets have employed “half-measures” thus far. Here’s couple of recent ones;

Our ProfessorB made the case last week that Brooklyn is “treading water,” not coming up with anything to justify the the hype ... most first round picks in a generational draft, a monopoly on salary cap space, etc. And it wasn’t just the pundits who were pushing that narrative that this summer is critical. SCOUT, the internally produced docu-series, is filled with commentary about how they have to get this off-season right.

“Spending to win was always unlikely,” wrote the Prof, summing up. “But two weeks into free agency, the Nets are barely treading water.”

Similarly, Steve Lichtenstein of the Steve’s Newsletter substack is not impressed by much Sean Marks has done thus far, as he wrote Saturday. He believes that the Nets are “resorting to the kind of half-measures that will ensure that the team will be bad, but not bad enough. That’s another year of hell in my book.” He even predicts that those “half-measures” could be Marks undoing. “[I]f the rookies don’t show enough progress as many around the league predict, the calls will grow louder for ownership to make a change before Marks gets the opportunity to make more controversial picks.” Seems a bit extreme.

Both offer caveats about 1) the off-season not being over; and 2) the long-term uncertainties attached to the draft picks whose success or failure won’t be known for more than a year.

We expect moves beyond Cam Thomas — the Nets can give him $17.5 million and still just touch the salary floor. As Professor B wrote, “Marks is always capable of surprising. However, the simplest path, and perhaps the most likely, would be to re-sign Thomas, retain Johnson and Wilson, and call it a day.”

Is that enough to satisfy the fan base? Hardly but that’s a high bar.

Cam, Cam, Cam

We already have written about Cam Thomas’ frustrated NSFW series of tweets Friday. It was, in our humble opinion, bad, bad, bad, from a number of angles.

Yes, he’s frustrated by the glacial pace of the negotiations and yes, the Zach Lowe comments just added fuel to the fire and the summation that many in the NBA believe he’s an “empty calories ball hog” was rough. Thomas is a proud man, proud of his accomplishments at the NBA level, but he’s been constantly dealing with whose who dismiss him as anything but a bucket-getter (as if that isn’t the most important part of the game, outscoring the opponents!)

However, it should be pretty obvious that letting off steam in a profanity-laced, name-calling tweet fest isn’t helpful to anyone. It’s our humble opinion that whatever value Cam Thomas had on the free agency market today is less than what it was yesterday. It may have helped him get something off his chest, and thrilled his many fans, but it’s hard to imagine after the outburst, there’s an NBA GM out there thinking to himself, “that’s the guy I want.”

Even back home in Brooklyn, a lot of heads have to be shaking, eyes rolling. The franchise doesn’t have a lot of tolerance for stuff like this ... and was one of the tweets a shot at his own teammates from last year? Seems like it. In defending his assist level, he dropped this bon mot...

Guess nobody was passin the mf ball . but just bring me up every time

— Cam Thomas (@24_camthomas) July 18, 2025

How else can this be interpreted other than a criticism of his teammates, past and present, or his coach?

Again, no need. Is he trying to so antagonize the Nets front office that they’d agree to deal him in a sign-and-trade so he can get a fresh start somewhere else? It would be the only way for him to get the big bucks he thinks he deserves but it’s tricky. Under the CBA, the receiving team (assuming they can make things work under the cap,) in most cases would get hard-capped. And what’s in it for the Nets. Things like this add to the polarization. He’s becoming damaged goods whose lack of self-awareness is puzzling.

Yeah, watch this space. Hoping for the best, but Cam, Cam, Cam, it’s a business. Don’t make it personal.

Cam Johnson says offers some hope to fans

When he got word that he’d finally been dealt, for Michael Porter Jr. and the Nuggets unprotected first in 2032, Cam Johnson offered this commenr.

“Obviously, we wish we could’ve been better,” Johnson said on “The Young Man and the Three” podcast. “And I was willing to do everything in my power to get us back on a winning track. And I think they’ll get there eventually. I have faith in those guys in that building.” (Emphasis ours.)

Generally, a positive comment but the use of “eventually” didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of the franchise’s strategy. It sounded, at least to us, that he thought the end of the rebuild was far in the incalculable distance.

At his introduction in Denver this week, he was far more effusive and brought up a key factor in the Nets rebuild lost in discussions of free agency, the draft etc.

“I have so much respect for that coaching staff in Brooklyn. I really loved playing for Jordi,” Johnson said. “I think Jordi has a tremendously bright future in this league. I think Brooklyn has a bright future. Those are my guys for sure.”

Here’s the video. Note the nodding heads from the Nuggets execs, perhaps recalling the six years Jordi spent in the Mile High City...

Cam Johnson on Jordi Fernandez and the Brooklyn Nets: “I have so much respect for that coaching staff in Brooklyn. I really loved playing for Jordi. I think Jordi has a tremendously bright future in this league. I think Brooklyn has a bright future. Those are my guys for sure.” pic.twitter.com/sr6gJg9zgJ

— Michael Scotto (@MikeAScotto) July 18, 2025

Johnson joins a long list of players, coaches, pundits etc. who’ve offered virtually unanimous praise for the first move Sean Marks made in the Nets rebuild: hiring a rookie head coach, passing on veterans, no matter how glowing their resume’. It seems like a no-brainer now — hiring a guy who GM annual surveys had identified as the best assistant coach in the league. But it wasn’t. Hiring a guy with no experience for the biggest job in your organization carries risks, period, particularly when the team was just beginning a rebuild. And as Cam Thomas noted in one of his tweets, the Nets got out to a 9-10 record before he went down and the Nets moved Dennis Schroder and Dorian Finney-Smith in late December.

The betting apps have the Nets at 20.5 wins, one more than they did last season. Fernandez shredded that narrative early. He’ll have another chance to do the same this year and don’t you think he won’t try.

You can give the Nets whatever grade you want for their rebuild so far, including an “incomplete,” but the selection of Fernandez deserves an A.

Art for the masses

Work is underway at Barclays Center on the key piece of the five-year $100 million renovation of the arena, which will be centered The Bridge, a two-level 6,800 square-foot multi-use space open to all guests

Here’s an image from last week’s Liberty game, showing progress. The construction will not affect either the Liberty or Nets schedules, nor concerts although some seats are unavailable...

Also this week, in an interview with Cultured Magazine, Clara Wu Tsai spoke about plans for art at the renovated arena, noting that prominent local artists have been commissioned to work with architects, engineers and her and Joe’s staff.

The grandest of the installations will be a work by sculptor Sarah Sze in the Barclay Center atrium. Sze’ most prominent work is “Shorter than the Day”, on permanent display in the arrivals and departures lounge at LaGuardia Airport. It’s a large constellation of photographs placed in a spherical arrangement. As Columbia University School of the Arts where Sze is a professor, describes it, “these hundreds of images form a fragile, amorphous sphere. Each photograph features the New York City sky at a different time of day.”

Wu Tsai would not reveal the specifics of the signature piece in discussing her plans with Cultured’s Sophia Cohen (daughter of Mets owner Steve Cohen) but she made it clear, it will be “more ambitious” than the LaGuardia sculpture and be placed in the renovated atrium, the arena’s main entrance.

“The LaGuardia piece is constructed from static images, and the shape and thematic intention of this work, as well as Sarah’s use of moving images, will be quite different,” said Wu Tsai. “Sarah’s a huge basketball fan, she’s spent a lot of time at the arena, and it’s given her a tremendous understanding of the space and how we want visitors to experience it.”

“We recently went to see a model of Sarah’s sculpture at her studio. Our whole team—the architects who are doing the renovation of Barclays Center, our senior executive leadership team, the CEO, and I—met with her at her studio to understand her vision, how it expands her practice, and how it will fit in with the redesign of the atrium.”

The second artist who Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment is working with is Rashid Johnson, a New York artist whose work is currently featured at the Guggenheim Museum. His “Anxious Audience” will be moved to Barclays Center at the close of the Guggenheim show.

As Wu Tsai notes, fans can view the work at the museum

“Yes, it’s actually the large-scale ‘Anxious Audience’ painting on the first floor of his current show at the Guggenheim,” Wu Tsai told Cohen. The work is a meditation on anxiety in which basic faces stare out from a grid as if witnesses to the artist’s anxiety.

Wu Tsai did not say where the work will be sited but noted that she hoped that fans at Barclays like those at the Guggenheim will have the pictures taken in front of it. So expect ti to be prominent.

“When it gets to Barclays Center, we hope people will recognize it and want to photograph themselves in front of it, too...

“Showing art in a sports context feels natural to us. Brooklyn and New York have more artists per capita than any other city in America. It makes sense for us to showcase art in our arena that celebrates and mirrors the diversity of Brooklyn.”

Already on the premises at Flatbush and Atlantic is local photojournalist LaToya Ruby Frazier’s “Liberty Portraits: a Monument to the 2024 Champions,” a collection of nine-foot high two-sided portraits of the team’s players stretched out on the plaza in front of the arena.

“LaToya focused on making sure the players didn’t feel that she was just a photojournalist,” Tsai told Cohen. “She really embraced the players. She noticed the duality—they’re heroes, but she also wanted to reveal their humanity,” said Tsai.

“In their display cases, the pieces are about nine feet tall. There are family portraits alongside images of each player with their game face on, and there are also family testimonials, which are an essential part of the project. She traveled to their hometowns and took the time to connect with them.”

Indeed, Wu Tsai has been instrumental in installing other art around the arena, most prominently the “We Belong Here ... “You Belong Here” neon sculpture by Tavares Strachan above the subway entrance across the plaza. She told Cultured its inspiration the $50 million Social Justice Fund she and Joe set up after the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. Brooklyn protestors used the plaza as a rally point, becoming a town square.

“This phrase is somewhat of an anthem of the Social Justice Fund. It is a message that we hoped could instill a sense of agency and a belief that all people in Brooklyn can coexist in beautiful ways,” she said. “We have a belief that art is a powerful tool for fostering empathy and community. We believe that art should be accessible to all. These themes form the basis for why we want to commission more public art at the Barclays Center.”

Wu Tsai did not provide a date for the installation of the pieces by Sze or Johnson. That depends on the progress of the renovation, etc. but the co-owner of the Nets and Liberty is likely to meet her goal of more public art at the arena. She is on the board of Lincoln Center. More significantly, her last big goal was winning a WNBA championship. How’d that work out?

Family ties

In other news regarding Clara Wu Tsai, she revealed at an seminar featuring her and former Net, former Knick and forever LinSanity ideal Jeremy Lin are second cousins. While it was known that the Tsais and Lin are close, this was the first disclosure that that the two are related. Wu Tsai explained that their grandmothers back in Taiwan were sisters!

Clara Wu Tsai talks about her cousin Jeremy Lin and the effect of LinSanity on the Asian American community including her and Joe’s two sons while Lin talks about the challenges of peaking at 23 and how he dealt with life after the spotlight faded. https://t.co/S4SetKhomq

— NetsDaily (@NetsDaily) July 16, 2025

“Our grandmothers were sisters,” Wu Tsai explained. “Obviously my grandmother was the older sister and his grandmother was the baby of the family, but we are second cousins.”

Wu Tsai that she and her family were well aware of the connection 15 years ago when LinSanity burst on the scene at Madison Square Garden elevating 23-year-old Chinese-American with a degree in economics from Harvard to superstar status at least for a couple of weeks.

“LinSanity was such a big part of my family when it came out. It brought so much joy to us. Just the way Jeremy was an underdog and captured the hearts of the nation, of so many people. including all the young Asian hoopers, including my two sons. It allowed them to dream that they can play in the NBA sometime.”

Who knew? We didn’t.

Final Note

As we noted, the Summer League is over. The next time, players will don the black-and-white for real will be 12 weeks from now when the Nets will fly to Macao, China’s gambling resort across the Pearl River from Hong Kong. They’ll play two games vs. the Phoenix Suns on October 10 and 12 in the 14,000 capacity arena of the Venetian Resort, owned by Dallas Mavericks governor Miriam Adelson. In the meantime, there will be news here and there but it usually is a desert. The big moves have taken place. Stay close.

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