As the Brooklyn Nets continue the opening stretch of their regular season, their G League affiliate, the Long Island Nets, began preparing for their 11th season, which starts November 7 in Greensboro, N.C., vs. the Swarm.
Practice opened Monday at HSS Training Center in Brooklyn and will continue at the Nets facility Wednesday before moving to the Yes You Can Center in Westbury. Media Day for the club and its training camp roster will take place Thursday afternoon at yet a third location, the team’s
home court at Nassau Coliseum.
The G Leaguers, who will play 50 games including four in suburban Montreal this season, made two announcements Monday outline what the team will look like. In the first, a press release, the organization unveiled its 17-player training camp roster including the three two-way players: Chaney Johnson, Grant Nelson, and second-round rookie Tyler Bilodeau. Only Johnson and Nelson played for Long Island last season.
Around the same time, Brooklyn also assigned three Nets players — 2026 first-round draft pick Joshua Jefferson and 2025 firsts Drake Powell and Ben Saraf — to Long Island. Powell and Saraf, the 22nd and 27th picks last year, spent time on the Island last season as well.
Beyond those three, there are other players on the roster who will look familiar to Brooklyn fans. Dion Brown, Dain Dainja, Ben Humrichous, Aaron Scott, and Dwight Murray all played on the Nets’ Summer League team this year. Two-ways Chaney Johnson and Grant Nelson saw action with the big club this past week while the third two-way — and No 43 pick — Tyler Bilodeau has been sidelined with a shoulder injury.
Dainja, Humrichous and Brown are all on Exhibit 10 contracts, meaning that as long as they remain with Long Island for 60 days, they’ll get a $91,000 signing bonus. Aaron Scott and Dwight Murray, meanwhile, were both acquired by Long Island in trades, what appear to be on standard G League contracts.
The Nets have had some development success over the past several years, with eight players on the current NBA roster having spent time in Uniondale. Drew Timme and Killian Hayes have also made their way through Long Island before landing elsewhere . Are there other diamonds in the rough this season?
Scott is one particularly interesting candidate. The 6’7” wing is 23 and signed an Exhibit 10 with the Boston Celtics last year after a stint with Summer League. He appeared in 26 games for their G League team, the Maine Celtics, including seven starts, averaging 7.2 points and 3.4 rebounds per game.
Scott spent four years in the NCAA, including three at North Texas (2021-24) before transferring to St. John’s for his senior year … a mere 20 miles from the Coliseum. Under Rick Pitino in his senior campaign, Scott averaged 8.4 points per game and started 30 games for the Big East champs.
Another interesting addition is Jonathan Pierre, a 6’9” forward. who Long Island traded for earlier this month, and the 23-year-old provides some intrigue as well. Between his youth and size at the position, he isn’t an ordinary G League addition. No Ceilings NBA viewed him as a sleeper in the 2025 class, but he fell short.
The Nets also acquired DJ Rodman, the son of NBA Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman. With the Greensboro Swarm last season, he averaged 7.3 points and 3.5 rebounds. At 6’6”, he also shot a whopping 60% from beyond the arc. However, he averaged just 2.8 attempts from that range. It’s a small sample size; he’s still highly intriguing in part because of his heritage.
Other than the two-ways, the player with the most NBA experience on the roster is 6’3” Isaiah “Zay” Wong, who has spent time with the Charlotte Hornets and Indiana Pacers, appearing in 21 career NBA games. Last season, he played in the ACL, Spain’s top league and averaged 14.6 points per game, getting a reputation as one of the league’s top passers
That would appear to make up the team’s rotation, depending on what the needs are in Brooklyn.
The rest of the roster is a bit of a hodgepodge.
—Nick Pringle is a 6’10” 24-year-old big man who played for Arkansas last season. Two years ago, Pringle helped Alabama to the Final Four in 2024 alongside his new teammate, Grant Nelson, before finishing his college career at Arkansas last season.
—Tidjiane Dioumassi, whom Long Island drafted in the G League international draft, is a Paris-born guard who played college ball at Southern University and Western Carolina. Last year, for the Catamounts, he played in 29 games, averaging 8.9 points, 2.7 rebounds, and 2.7 assists as a 3-and-D specialist.
—Wooga Poplar, another 23-year-old, signed an Exhibit 10 with the Chicago Bulls last year after a career with two of the NCAA’s top programs, Miami, where he played with “Zay” Wong, and Villanova. A four-star recruit in high school, Poplar averaged 8.9 points for Windy City.
Finally, Long Island is also bringing three players from last month’s local player tryouts into training camp. The team usually carries one or two local tryouts on its final roster. The three are Jeriah Coleman, Jordan Dingle, and Cedric Mbiaba.
The most interestingof the trio in probably Coleman who is a 7’1” center who played five years in the NCAA at Nevada following two years of JUCO ball at Clarendon College. He finished his final JUCO season ranked first on the team and third overall in the country in blocks per game (3.6 per game). At Nevada, though, he struggled to find consistent minutes. As an NBA scout told NetsDaily, rim-protecting big men are among the top players to emerge from the G League in today’s game.
Dingle is the most local: a Valley Stream native who grew up locally. Typical of local tryout’s, he’s on the older side, 26-year-old who spent four years in college, including a year at St. John’s, adding to the local connection. He spent his first four years at Penn, where he won the Ivy League Player of the Year Award during his final season, averaging 23.4 points per game, second in the nation. After graduating, he spent a year playing in Serbia before signing with a team in Kosovo in March.
Training camp will run through November 5. With 14 players currently in camp, not including the three two-ways, the organization will need to make three cuts before the season starts. The home opener on the 13th against the College Park Skyhawks.
