NEW YORK -- The Brooklyn Nets are just one game into their 2026-27 NBA season as they seek to win more games than they did during the 2025-26 campaign when they finished with just 20 victories. While Brooklyn has 81 more games to play over the course of this season, fans and pundits alike are trying to make sense of the season opener, especially with regards to the Nets' 2025 NBA Draft class.
"I don't know. Obviously, nobody has guaranteed minutes. We see some good things, we see some things that we have to be better at," Nets head coach Jordi Fernandez said when asked how much he expects his rotation to change during the early portion of the season. Part of the reason for the question is due to the fact that Drake Powell, Ben Saraf, and Danny
Wolf did not play a single minute against the Charlotte Hornets.
"We expect more from ourselves, but I gotta give them enough consistency, enough change. As long as the attitude is good and the intentions are good, I gotta be a little bit patient with what I want to see," Fernandez continued. "But then at the same time, if I feel I have to make changes based on the benefit of the group, I will. It's a process. It's game one. If I change things right now, it will be a sign of you're freaking out."
To Fernandez's point, 10 players saw the floor for the Nets in Wednesday's 110-103 loss to the Hornets with Egor Demin and Nolan Traore playing 27 and 16 minutes, respectively. For a 2025 class that the Nets promoted throughout last season, 60% of the class not playing a single second is not a good sign when Brooklyn is trying to end this rebuild as a competitive team.
However, it is just the first game of the season and when asked, Fernandez made it clear that he will adjust the rotation as he sees fit and that could understandably take some time to occur. Moving forward, Fernandez and general manager Sean Marks will be under the microscope in this regard. If this trend is still happening when it's midway through the season, it could make the fanbase uneasy given how much the franchise has riding on their five first-round picks from a year ago.
This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: Should the Nets be worried about most of their 2025 NBA draft class?
