The Nets accomplished one primary goal in the first unofficial season of the rebuild and that was hiring Jordi Fernandez. The verdict is in and it isn’t in question. The offseason, marked as one of the most
crucial during Sean Marks’ tenure, remains TBD.
And that TBD needs to turn into praise within the next two years.
The Cam Thomas saga dragged out ad nauseam and the fans are in for another long one (we think) — ESPN projects them to win 23 games this upcoming season —which doesn’t sound far fetched and it keeps expectations low. The way they like it.
If Year 1 was about hiring a good coach, then Year 2 must be the season they lay the foundation.
Sean Marks selected a record-high five first-round picks. The draftees, four of five who claim citizenship from different countries, are very young and predominantly guards who can play multiple positions.
“The scouting work that we’ve done on these guys throughout not just this year but leading up to this year would lead us to believe it’s a versatile class, right? They can play multiple positions. As Jordi just mentioned, multiple ball‑handlers,” Marks said at the rookies’ press conference in June.
It might work. It might not. It’s too early to tell but it’s certainly unique.
Yet, it’s the reality — a seemingly long rebuild that’s focused on players who won’t have the egos to challenge the team-first mentality the Nets are hoping to instill. Can it revamp an organization with low expectations? Sure. Does it win championships? Only with superstars.
Team-first, position-less ball under a competitor like Jordi Fernandez seems like a good bet to take, but the players, specifically the ones they drafted this season, will determine the fate of this organization in the short-term and long-term.
Egor Demin.
Nolan Traore.
Drake Powell.
Ben Saraf.
Danny Wolf.
Those are the names that need to be the cornerstones of the organization, be it in a short amount of time or in a couple of years. None are older than 21. Four play similar positions. Skepticism from the fanbase is justified — the “little brother” has endured a long history of defeat and disappointment — and of the five, only one, Wolf, was taken lower than draftniks projected.
February 18 will mark 10 years since Mikhail Prokhorov and the previous regime hired Sean Marks as the new general manager of the Nets. Since that day, the Nets have one playoff series win to their name — two total since moving to Brooklyn. That doesn’t include the six-year drought from 2007-13.
To give Marks his due: the Nets were a spiritless disaster, fittingly hired during the hours leading up to the 2017 NBA Trade Deadline.
That’s what makes this iteration of the rebuild a little more… tedious. Nets fans expected the worst during the last one — they were a bad team with no picks, no cap space, no direction and no spirit. The “empty cupboard” rebuild lasted only three years when it was expected to last way longer.
Perhaps, Nets fans were spoiled. This subsequently leads up to where we are today, entering the 2025-26 season with the notion that it’s a clean slate, but that can be perceived as a misconception.
The Nets lost 50 games two seasons back even though they were trying to win games. The Nets were a chicken running without its head, attempting to recover from the catastrophe that was Brooklyn’s Big Three falling apart.
The team last year had their moments, yet there weren’t many players who developed and drawing the eighth pick wasn’t good enough to justify yet another strenuous season.
As Lucas Kaplan said after the draft: The Brooklyn Nets have left us with more questions than answers.
The list of questions have only grown.
Why so many guards? Did they reach at the Draft? What’s going on with Drake Powell’s knee injury? What’s going to happen with Cam Thomas?
Hopefully there will be some clarity on all fronts at Media Day.
This was a summer of the homegrown Brooklyn Net. The first team to ever draft five players in the first round of a draft. But their best scoring homegrown player, perhaps in Sean Marks’ tenure, got low-balled amid an extremely difficult restricted free agent market. Losing him for nothing would be disgraceful, yet it feels inevitable.
As Net Income wrote in the OSR: “Thomas will (likely) be the fifth straight 20-point scorer to leave the Nets, joining James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, Mikal Bridges.”
They have 10 guards entering camp. Four of five draft picks are guard/forwards. Is Thomas going to be sitting half a basketball game because the Nets are prioritizing young players? What determines success for one of these rookies if Thomas’ contributions weren’t enough? The CBA is going to be the same. My guess is their chase for a FIBA-version of the NBA, guys who play fast, play multi-positions, and subsequently players who make decisions quickly and efficiently.
Isn’t that every GM and coach’s dream, though?
Marks said it in June: “It’s 0.5-second basketball, you catch and make a decision. You don’t hold the ball. It’s also where the NBA is going: guys who can play multiple positions, guard multiple positions, and make it hard on the defense”
When fully healthy during the 2023-24 season, Cam Thomas had the ball in his hands for 4.03 average seconds per touch, fourth-highest on the team behind Dennis Schroder, Spencer Dinwiddie, and Dennis Smith Jr. (min. 20 games played). The top of the list in the NBA included Jalen Brunson, Trae Young, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Scoring guards.
We can speculate all we want but it would probably be best to trade him somewhere suitable if there’s no path forward. That’s assuming someone would take him on at the deadline.
And for culture. Michael Porter Jr. had quite the summer. His sour rhetoric about women and the LGBTQ+ community raised eyebrows and one would have to assume his words were a shock to the Nets, who are co-owned by a woman, Clara Wu Tsai, and the first and only team to roster and play an openly gay NBA player, Jason Collins.
Will any of it matter when the ball tips off? Hopefully it doesn’t get to that point, but hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue and the Nets didn’t tolerate anything from the last player that caused serious controversy around the organization.
Expect that to be a topic at Media Day along with a lot of other things.
Fortunately, we’ll get a better sense into how they’re thinking and what’s going on with some of the new faces around HSS Training Center. We wouldn’t expect much national coverage around the team. Opposing teams’ fans will probably invade Barclays Center, while anti-tank and pro-tank Nets fans attempt to justify a stance on their fandom… again.
The new guys can help rewrite the script on the organization and its missed opportunities. The offseason was supposed to “go through Brooklyn.” It’s hard to say that confidently with only two picks to show for the salaries/players they took back.
A piece like this should sound more optimistic next year. They have cap space and draft capital to build out their team via trade and/or free agency in 2027. That’s when they’re expected to strike.
Until then… enjoy?
