On Thursday’s episode of The Zach Lowe Show, the titular host and guest Howard Beck briefly touched on the Brooklyn Nets, who picked up their first win of the season the previous night against the Indiana
Pacers.
After Beck raised an eyebrow at the state of veteran leadership on the team, Lowe cringed at the thought of Brooklyn’s offense if Cam Thomas — who exited the game with left hamstring tightness — misses extended time. But then their focus turned to the five first-round draft picks, the rookies that we’ve all heard plenty about but really haven’t seen too much of.
“It’s disconcerting to simultaneously tank and not even play your young players, your rookies. Like, they’re playing young players, but not the five guys you just drafted. We’re not trying to win, but also, we don’t think these guys are even ready to participate heavily in games we’re not trying to win,” says Lowe.
Beck responds that “over the course of a couple home games at Barclays,” he asked some non-Nets personnel which Brooklyn prospect (not necessarily a rookie) intrigues them the most: “I just got these long pauses and deep stares off into the distance.”
Here is the full episode, timestamped at their Nets discussion, but that’s the gist of it. Lowe repeats the frustration we all share, to a degree: that Brooklyn stinks but the rookies aren’t playing. Beck lands one more blow: “There’s nobody on the Nets that is really even intriguing anyone on rival teams right now.”
Listen, I hated their draft as much as the next guy (not that I am a devoted draftnik, in which case I’d still be wrong quite often), but there’s a little bit of confirmation bias going on here. Many believe Brooklyn had a bizarre draft, that Sean Marks’ front office as a whole is lost at sea, and that’s fine. But I’m not sure their start to the season is, in and of itself, evidence to all that. Let’s go in order.
- Egor Dëmin missed all of training camp and most of preseason with a plantar fascia injury, and is already entrenched in the rotation eight games in.
- Nolan Traore is a small, skinny guard with a questionable shot who doesn’t turn 20 until next offseason. He is not ready for serious NBA action right now, and is primed to play plenty of G League minutes. Does that speak poorly to Brooklyn’s decision to take him at #19? Perhaps. But not to their development plan.
- Drake Powell dealt with left knee tendinopathy all summer, then sprained his ankle in Brooklyn’s first game of the season, then re-injured it the next time he played. He’s appeared in two of three games in which he was available.
- Ben Saraf, the #26 overall pick, started Brooklyn’s first five games of the season, and in that time, he was comfortably and unsurprisingly the NBA’s worst starting point guard. He’s currently out of the rotation.
- Danny Wolf, dealing with a sprained ankle, has only been available for two games. He received garbage time minutes in one of them.
Is that ideal? No. Brooklyn’s coaches certainly knew Saraf was going to struggle mightily, yanking him after those predictable struggles is a bit strange. And Danny Wolf is 21; he has to play soon. But it’s been just eight games of an 82-game season. Injuries (and some trades, possibly) will befall this roster. It’s undeniably frustrating to watch a team tank for the second year in a row and not play the fruits of that first tank-year, but there is a ton of basketball to be played. The only two rookies that have been entirely healthy and scratched from the rotation are two of the youngest players in the whole 2025 NBA Draft.
The Brooklyn Nets very well might have messed up their five first-round selections last June. Still, it’s too early to say that for sure, and it’s definitely too early to say they are messing up the development of these five rookies.
Egor Dëmin
Season stats: 7 GP, 18.9 MPG, 5.3/3.0/2.6 slash line, 33/32/75 shooting splits. 86% of shots from three. 1.6 TO + 1.9 PF + 1.3 stocks (stl+blk) per game.
Stats this week: 3 GP, 16.7 MPG, 2.3/1.7/2.7 slash line. 3-of-14 from floor, 1-of-9 from deep. One turnover, two fouls, seven stocks.
The scariest part of Dëmin’s prospect profile was never the 3-point shooting, but rather the overall lack of burst, lateral mobility, flexibility, juice … you get the idea. These deficiencies impact every facet of the game, of course, but they are really exposed when the #8 overall pick has to zone up on the weak-side then close out to an athlete like Terrence Shannon Jr. which he does here…
Oy.
Dëmin has had a few of these moments through his first seven games, and will have plenty more over the course of his rookie season. You’ve heard the spiel many times: In the modern NBA, high pick-and-roll takes place 35 feet away from the rim, and both corners are often filled with deadly shooters. That is so much ground to cover, so much space to close. Without stop-and-start athleticism, you don’t have a chance.
Defense might end up being the biggest challenge for Dëmin to overcome, but to that end, he had a rollercoaster week. Not just downs like the closeout above, but ups in the form of those seven stocks (stl+blk) you see above, and even more deflections…
I love that second clip, where he stunts at Naz Reid in order to bait a pass, which he then gets his hand on. It may seem counterintuitive for a player with such poor foot-speed to be aggressive and take chances on defense, but with Egor’s 6’10” wingspan, that might be his best path to defensive productivity in the league.
Regarding the offense, Head Coach Jordi Fernández had this to say after Monday’s loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves: “All his setups have to be on point, how he runs all the actions, how he plays pick-and-roll, whether it’s to spray the ball or to find himself or create a shot for himself.”
What does that mean exactly? Well, what’s the difference between these two plays?
On the first one, Dëmin doesn’t wait for Day’Ron Sharpe to set a solid screen, meaning his primary defender can get through it, no problem. And as we’ve established Dëmin doesn’t have the on-ball juice just yet to shake a defender here, so he travels.
On the second play however, he gets a solid screen, and a little hesitation dribble is all he needs to hit the paint, collapse the defense, and let his vision do the rest. Dëmin’s development will not leap off the screen in year one. He won’t go from getting ripped at half-court to crossing people up and scoring in isolation. But keep an eye on how he can run defenders into screens; and again, hopefully Fernández & co. start to draw up more designed plays for him.
Egor Dëmin had a rough shooting week. He shot 1-of-9 from deep and most of those misses were not close. But the week overall? Not too bad, really.
Ben Saraf
Stats: N/A
Ben Saraf played a couple garbage time minutes against the Timberwolves, but is otherwise removed from the real rotation for now. When asked why he thought this was the case, he responded quite clearly: “I think he [Jordi] wants more on the defensive side. I think the last two games, I had, like, a couple of breakdowns on defense. So, it’s really important for the team. I think this is the main thing.”
We know Jordi isn’t punishing him for missing shots, so I have no doubt this is true. The Nets are just trying to drill that Saraf cannot snap out of focus, even for a second. He’s already facing a deficit in (once again) athleticism. On this play…
…Nic Claxton goes to double Alperen Şengün. I’d bet my bottom dollar that Fernández outlined pregame — notice this play occurs before the first media timeout — that the Nets were to on send aggressive help at Şengün in the post if he had a mismatch. Sure, you’re doubling off KD here, but you can’t double off the other side and leave a totally empty corner. Saraf has to be behind Clax and rotate to Durant more quickly.
Saraf will struggle chasing more athletic guards through screens and sprinting around the perimeter (like Dëmin), but he can’t drift out of focus and miss Nic Claxton going to double. Harsh? Sure, but that’s the message.
“I feel like I’m a capable defensive player, I think I just need a little more focus on some possessions. Yeah, I need to be there.
The Rest
Though I largely defended the early-season strategy above, I sure do wish the other rookies were playing more. I might have jumped the gun with this column here, huh. At least Drake Powell did this before tweaking his ankle yet again…
The next chance Jordi Fernández will have to play Egor Dëmin and some of his draft mates is on Friday night, when the Brooklyn Nets host the Detroit Pistons at 7:30 p.m. ET, beginning NBA Cup play.
