Why did the Brooklyn Nets select Egor Dëmin at #8 in the 2025 NBA Draft?
“I think the first and foremost was the IQ. We loved how he played the game, how he moved the ball, involved his teammates. He saw one, two plays ahead. Obviously the size for position, you know, is great, when you’ve got a 6’8” combo guard, point guard. He can play off the ball too, it’s really good. I think we enjoyed watching him at BYU, and then we had multiple opportunities to see him in Brooklyn up close and personal, getting
to meet him. I think his defense is great, how he guards pick and roll. So, there’s a lot of attributes there.”
Sean Marks, speaking to reporters just after the first round concluded, gave us the laundry list of attributes that made the Russian guard their target at #8. He did not mention outside shooting.
Alas, a few minutes later, Marks was asked directly about Dëmin’s 3-point shot: “I think we saw flashes of what he can do over the course of the year, specifically the shooting. And I think shooting would be the easy thing to say, ‘hey, they can improve in shooting.’ I think that’s a skill that you can improve over time, you know, being diligent on that. I think there was a lot of other attributes in respect to Egor and why we wanted him … You know, I never want to pencil him into ‘hey, you’re going to fit in this little box.’ To me, it’s exciting to see what he does. I suspect the shooting is going to continue to improve, but he showed us out here at HSS that he can absolutely shoot the basketball.”
Dëmin started his BYU career on a hot streak, hurt his knee in mid-December, and never regained his form. Per Synergy Sports, he scored 0.78 points per jumper in his lone NCAA season, a 24th percentile mark across Division I basketball. He finished the year 27.3% from deep. Dëmin was more efficient than that in his pre-NCAA career — mostly with Real Madrid — and the Nets weren’t the only ones impressed by his pre-draft workouts…
Well, Dëmin shot 38.5% from deep in his rookie year on over 12 attempts per 100, unprecedented volume and efficiency for a teenager in the NBA. In fact, only nine teenagers have ever taken at least ten treys per 100 possessions, and nobody has made more than Dëmin…
Dëmin turned 20 years old on March 3, but by then, he was already ruled out for the remainder of the season with plantar fasciitis. Sure, he’s only taken 322 total threes in his career and didn’t shoot well on the few middies he took, but his jumper is off to a flying start at the NBA level. They all feel like they’re going in, he’s not afraid to take big ones, and those numbers don’t lie. Dëmin’s shooting is the biggest positive any Nets rookie displayed in 2025-26.
It seems unfair to Brooklyn’s scouting department to term their belief in Dëmin’s shooting a “leap of faith,” but it’s jarring just how important it’s become. Nearly 72% of Dëmin’s shots this season were threes. Per Synergy, nearly 60% of his shots were catch-and-shoot looks. Given his play at BYU, where he led a top-5 offense in Division I basketball on heavy pick-and-roll usage, I understand why Marks initially mentioned so many of Dëmin’s other attributes. But we’re still waiting for those to pop.
My favorite Dëmin plays are passes like this…
The Nets suddenly have a 5-on-4 advantage thanks to a gamble that didn’t go NOLA’s way, Egor feels Zion Williamson rotating toward the rim, and boom, a fastball to the opposite corner. Williamson doesn’t have much interest in closing out on Powell, but this is an encouraging example of Brooklyn’s belief that high-level passing will play all over the court, even if Egor never becomes much of a primary ball-handler.
To that end, it was interesting to hear the #8 overall pick admit that he felt his role changed once he started sharing the backcourt with Nolan Traore.
In the midst of answer about his adjustment to the NBA during his exit interview, Dëmin said: “Being a rookie who has an opportunity to start as a starting point guard — which is even probably more responsibility than later on when Nolan would get on the court and I started playing more of a wing — I think that’s something that gave me a lot.”
Dëmin’s usage did dip slightly after the calendar flipped to 2026, around the time the two rookies were consistently starting in the backcourt together. I thought that was more due to Egor’s own limitations as a ball-handler, particularly compared to his catch-and-shoot ability, and/or him growing fatigued during a long NBA season, especially with plantar fasciitis.
Again, he just turned 20 years old. He will improve. Dëmin even limited these types of turnovers as the season progressed…
…but high hips and a lack of wiggle limit his effectiveness inside the arc.
One obvious goal is to live in the weight room; Dëmin has talked about packing on muscle since last summer. It may not solve all his problems on offense, but it should help him bring the ball up court and say, hold defenders in “jail” in the pick-and-roll. The question is how much some extra muscle will help his drives to the rim.
On these plays, Cade Cunningham (an extreme example) doesn’t bowl over his defender with a shove or shoulder, but crucially, he can dribble through contact…
Dëmin takes long, sweeping strides at 6’9”, but he can’t extend his dribble right now. That explains, in part, the lack of rim-finishing and ties into the most fascinating area of his game: the playmaking.
Egor Dëmin averaged 3.3 assists and 1.7 turnovers per game this season, nothing too crazy. He rarely tried to finish through multiple defenders, occasionally a bit conservative (and frustrating for fans) with his scoring, but he did create a ton of catch-and-shoot opportunities for teammates. Who knows how many assists Dëmin would have had if Noah Clowney and Nolan Traore and Terance Mann were league-average 3-point shooters?
That being said, in 52 games, Dëmin had just 57 assists that led to buckets at the rim. And after skimming through all of these assists on Synergy, there weren’t a ton of high-level reads to create these layups. I thought he missed a few of these admittedly tough plays this season…
Was Dëmin’s playmaking hampered by his plantar fasciitis? By a general lack of opportunity to drive downhill, which should be mitigated by muscle gain? How valuable is his kick-out passing for an offense that wants to shoot plenty of 3-pointers? Is his playmaking graded on an unfair curve based on the scouting reports coming out of BYU? Were his passing numbers at BYU juiced by regimented pick-and-roll reads?
These are all valid questions without easy answers. I don’t believe Dëmin’s lack of driving was entirely responsible for a lack of playmaking flashes, but there’s a balance somewhere. I’m excited to watch Dëmin up the aggression next season, and hopefully make some more complex reads.
His frame should help him see over defenders; likewise, he met expectations defensively in 2025-26 season, largely due to his positional size. Sean Marks emphasized this when Dëmin was drafted, and watching him post decent deflection/steal rates despite a lack of athleticism was encouraging. Of course, Dëmin occasionally got bodied down low and struggled to change direction, particularly on closeouts…
Collin Murray-Boyles was drafted one spot after Egor Dëmin, at #9 overall by the Toronto Raptors last June. This April, CMB has burst onto the scene by playing a tremendous playoff series against the Cleveland Cavaliers…
Egor Dëmin did not have a bad season. His 3-point shooting was utterly remarkable, and he had a real chance to make Second Team All-Rookie had he not been sidelined with plantar fasciitis in late February. While I’ve questioned just how talented of a playmaker he really is, the flashes were there as a teenager, and Dëmin’s size, feel, work ethic, and shooting will likely combine to make him a positive regular-season player moving forward, particularly on offense.
But watching these NBA Playoffs, I can’t help but worry about Dëmin’s ultimate ceiling while seeing a player like CMB, who has tremendous feel but also unteachable strength, thrive. Pardon the cliché, but the postseason, as disparate from regular-season ball as it has ever been, demands extreme physicality and explosion. It demands ball-handlers who can create offense from thin air and navigate traffic. This may not be a Dëmin complaint as much as it is a Nets front office complaint, a group that, under Sean Marks, has often faded physicality and explosion.
Dëmin can shoot the rock, and for that, the Nets deserve credit. He will be but 20 years old in his sophomore season, with ample opportunity to improve under an ideal head coach in Jordi Fernández. In any case, it appears Brooklyn selected a functional rotation player with the #8 overall pick, no small feat. But next season, we’ll have to see more besides impressive outside shooting.
That being said, Egor Dëmin has more charisma than he knows what to do with. For any flaws he night have, it’s tough not to believe in him.
“It feels safe,” said Dëmin of his current situation. “I would say. I just — I know exactly where I’m going to be. I know exactly what I’m going to be doing, and I know exactly what type of timing throughout the summer I’m going to have, right? So it kind of gives me confidence in my development, and that’s why I think this summer is probably one of the most important summers in my life.”
