Sports fandom is increasingly an exercise in mock GM’ing. The rise of fantasy sports certainly played a role as well as the shift from analysis in mainstream sports media to trade/free agency rumors and clips of “debate shows” on YouTube Shorts, or maybe it’s just the technocratic optimization of pro sports along with every other cultural pastime that we have.
Yes, fans have always had opinions on trades and free agency signings. But, faced with irrefutable evidence that better ball-players are often
selected higher in amateur drafts, and that middling or losing teams shouldn’t pretend a first-round playoff exit is worth more than a higher pick in said draft — if the one true goal is a championship — we clamor for our middling or losing teams to lose. To tank, which is to say so much losing that there is no shame, only embarrassment, a feeling mostly washed over by the fact that players on tanking teams are place-holders for the unknown future players that will eventually come in and do the winning.
Even the curmudgeons adapt to the world of optimized sports. You miss Andray Blatche taking stepback 16-footers (welcome to the club), but deep down, you know he probably should’ve just taken those catch-and-shoot threes. You miss the idea of a menacing cleanup hitter, but you understand why a team’s best hitter shouldn’t be placed 44.4% of the way down the lineup.
These are the rules that have been laid out for us sports fans. Jordi Fernández benching Egor Dëmin after a few defensive mistakes or the Brooklyn Nets keeping Danny Wolf in the G League for the first month of the season can seem like a violation of the rules. If Brooklyn tanked to draft these guys, and game reps are the most valuable thing for a young player, as Fernández often likes to say, and if the Nets’ future depends upon developing their young players … then why didn’t they arrive in Brooklyn with the keys in their hands? Doesn’t seem very optimal.
I think teams break the rules more than the fans. The Nets don’t want to have a miserable locker room losing day in and day out. The Nets want to hang onto Cam Johnson just a little bit longer because people love him. Jordi Fernández doesn’t want the locker room to ask why a 20-year-old Drake Powell can play through the mistakes that a 24-year-old Ziaire Williams cannot.
Human emotions are still resent in every decision, minor or major. What’s gonna happen with this tank, I have no idea. But with Brooklyn’s rookies continuing to entrench themselves in the rotation, not to mention that Cam Johnson trade looking pretty decent, maybe it’s okay to simply grimace and hope for the best. (Seriously though, what’s gonna happen with this tank?)
Egor Dëmin
Season stats: 24 GP, 23.1 MPG, 8.7/3.1/3.4 slash line, 38/34/84 shooting splits. 1.7 TO + 2.0 PF + 1.2 stock (stl+blk) per game.
Stats last two weeks: 3 GP, 24 MPG, 11.3/2.0/1.7 slash line, 12-of-33 FG, 6-of-20 3P, 4-of-5 FT. Five TO + five PF + five stocks (stl+blk) total.
Over the last two weeks, the Nets have played just three games thanks to the scheduling shenanigans of the In-Season Tournament, but Egor Dëmin has nonetheless seen some ups and downs. He was invisible in Dallas, scoring three points on seven shots, playing just 18 minutes, before a 17-point performance vs. Milwaukee.
“That’s something coaches kind of want from me, obviously. That’s something I’m looking for, trying to look for, and the adjustment is now me doing it every game, but that’s something I really have to try to follow it every single game,” said Dëmin of maintaining his aggressiveness.
Facing the Miami Heat on Thursday night, he was constantly harassed by Davion Mitchell but he did follow through on his promise to be more aggressive. It was quite the challenge…
Dëmin shot 5-of-18, tying his season-high in attempts, and recorded just one assist, tying a season-low.
He took 12 of his shots from three, including some prayers like the one above, and while that might not be exactly what his coaches have in mind when they ask for more aggressiveness, it’s all part of the trial-and-error. Particularly if you’re asking him to create from a standstill…
The Nets are asking Egor to try and touch the paint, first and foremost. Aggressiveness and scoring are not wholly synonymous … but maybe they’re a little synonymous. Per NBA tracking, Dëmin passes out of 51.2% of his drives, the highest share of any Net, and second-highest mark of any NBA player that is at least 6’8”.
Plays like these…
…where Egor eats up all the space in front of him and realizes he can beat both PnR defenders to the rim are major highlights. He’ll eventually have to blend these takes with his passing; he often commits to either the shot or pass a bit early, and it’s why he hasn’t assisted on many two-point baskets this season, including zero lob passes so far.
Danny Wolf
Season stats: 12 GP, 18 MPG, 8.8/4.3/1.8 slash line, 42/35/89 shooting splits. 1.5 TO + 1.0 PF + 0.7 stock (stl+blk) per game.
Stats last two weeks: 3 GP, 23 MPG, 11.3/5.3/1.7 slash line, 13-of-33 FG, 4-of-14 3P, 4-of-6 FT. Five TO + one PF + five stock (stl+blk) total.
Danny Wolf, on their other, needs no reminders to be aggressive. The Nets are still winning his minutes, nine points / 100 possessions better when he’s on the court, though after just 200 minutes this seems like little more than a noisy small sample. They haven’t been able to score well with him on the court, though their opponents have completely forgotten how to shoot, and while Wolf hasn’t been terrible on defense, it seems unlikely that that accurately reflects his impact. (I’ll admit, though, that when he plays next to Day’Ron Sharpe as he often has, that’s a fearsome defensive rebounding duo.)
Naturally, the turnovers have been a big point of contention so far. Jordi Fernández has called them out a couple times, including before Brooklyn’s contest against the Heat. A friend who works in NBA Draft scouting half-jokingly said to me, “Okay, Wolf might be a real NBA player, but I don’t know if I could ever trust him in the last five minutes of the game.”
Now, you’d typically associate a high-turnover big with a lower feel, lesser basketball instincts, whatever…but I’ve been quite impressed with this part of Wolf’s transition to the NBA. He’s slow when rotating and closing out, sure, but he knows where to go. And offensively, he consistently makes plays like this: a timely sacrifice cut to create an open three, then burning Cooper Flagg by relocating and driving off the catch…
Of his 18 total turnovers, only two of them have been “lost ball” turnovers, according to Basketball Reference, as opposed to bad passes or illegal screens/charges/3-second calls. Though an incredibly small sample size, that’s a promising start, because one of Wolf’s best attributes is how he keeps the dribble alive. This play doesn’t happen if Wolf picks the ball up early…
And this persistent drive against Flagg gets him all the way to the cup…
Can Wolf cut down the turnovers? Can he keep shooting 39% from three? If he does both, he’ll be a pretty good offensive player, but he’s already a promising one.
Drake Powell
Season stats: 19 GP, 17.7 MPG, 6.0/1.8/1.9 slash line, 49/38/95 shooting splits. 1.2 TO + 1.7 PF + 0.9 stock (stl+blk) per game.
Stats last two weeks: N/A (two games with three minutes played)
Drake Powell rolled his right ankle again on Thursday, though again, he was walking around the locker room postgame without crutches or a boot or even a limp. Before that, he logged just three minutes of PT against the Mavericks due to what Jordi Fernández termed a lack of “readiness to play,” though Powell responded with a 13/4/3 performance against the Bucks.
“I respect him [Fernández] for that. It just shows that he cares, not only about me as a basketball player but as a human being,” said Powell of the tough love.
Despite the hiccup, Powell has been Brooklyn’s most consistent rookie so far; barring a couple catch-and-shoot threes either rimming in or out, you know what you’re getting on a night-to-night basis, an athletic off-guard trying to hound his opponents and expand his offensive game bit by bit. To that end, I wish Brooklyn ran in transition more, putting Powell in, like, some 3-on-3 situations instead of always having to play 5-on-5.
Alas, per Synergy Sports tracking, Brooklyn has posted the third-lowest share of possessions in transition to this point in the season, and they run even less frequently with Powell on the court. The defense has improved, but it hasn’t made them any faster, exactly.
Jordi Fernández explained why: “With the better rebounding, we saw an increase of opportunities. The problem was the amount of turnovers that happened in transition. So those are the things that we have to work on … The priority, I thought, it was rebounding and containing the ball, and I think we’ve done a better job with that. Now we got to go the other way and run, so one step at a time.”
Powell doesn’t yet have counters for when he sees a crowded paint, but when he has space to attack…
…the flashes can be quite bright. Mind the cherry-picking (and the turnover rate), but Powell is one just three rookies shooting 50% from two, 35% from three, and 90% from FT (min. 50 FGA). Ice, elevate that ankle and then give us more please!
Nolan Traore
In the last Rookie Report, I praised Nolan Traore’s 3-point shot, and hey would you look at that? Over his last nine games, Traore is shooting 25-of-49 from deep, over 50% on 5.4 attempts per game. That, in part, earned him a call-up to the big league club, where he played nine minutes against both Dallas and Milwaukee.
“Nolan deserved to play because he’s done so well with Long Island,” said Fernández. “He’s gotten better every single game, not just the numbers, it’s how he was playing. He was playing the same way we want him to play here: confident, shooting the ball, assist:turnover ratio great, all that stuff about ball-pressuring.”
Brooklyn’s head coach does not appreciate anybody trying to knock his small minute-count either: “Those minutes mean so much. Real minutes mean a lot. So I know that, whatever, eight-to-ten minutes may not seem a lot, but you can really help a team win a game in nine, ten minutes. There’s winning plays, there’s winning stretches.”
You can see Traore’s confidence growing. He hasn’t been perfect down on the Island, but he less often looks overmatched. Anecdotally, some of his drives have felt more under control, even if he’s not getting all the way to the rack…
He’s recorded only six turnovers in his last four games with LIN, after posting three separate games of six turnovers earlier in the season.
Traore didn’t pop off the screen in his 18 NBA minutes this past week; however, he didn’t commit a single turnover, even if he was a bit hesitant to shoot. He wasn’t playing totally free out there, but he was far from shell-shocked. One more run of G League minutes might just be enough to push him back up to Brooklyn full-time, particularly if the tanking intensifies.
Ben Saraf
Saraf has been assigned to the G League, as the Long Island Nets embark on a three-game road trip starting on Saturday in Mexico City. We’ll see if he’s recalled to Brooklyn anytime during the trip, though it might be nice to get him consistent run after he missed the last two games with an illness.
Despite the occasional highlight, Saraf has really struggled in either location, and while it’s not time to worry about his G League production, 25 assists to 24 made baskets to 23 turnovers likely isn’t the ratio the Nets are looking for from the #26 overall pick. Don’t be surprised if Saraf’s G League stint lasts longer than expected.
As mentioned, the Long Island Nets take on the Mexico City Capitanes on Saturday at 1:00 p.m. ET, where Nolan Traore and Ben Saraf are expected to play. That game will be available for ESPN+ subscribers.
The Brooklyn Nets take on the Toronto Raptors at home on Sunday evening, with tip-off scheduled for 6:00 p.m. ET. We’ll have to see about Drake Powell’s ankle, but barring a surprise, Danny Wolf and Egor Dëmin will suit up for that one.
