The Brooklyn Nets have made most of the moves they're going to make over the course of the 2026 NBA offseason as they're hoping to have a better campaign in the 2026-27 season. Brooklyn has added some veterans to the roster, headlined by trading for Minnesota Timberwolves forward Julius Randle, but some are wondering what the rest of the rebuild looks like at this point.
"After going 20-62 last season (with a preseason over/under win total of 19.5), the Nets are tabbed to be one of the league’s worst teams again. They’re listed with the second-lowest wins over/under by FanDuel and BetMGM at 24.5," Brian Lewis of the New York Post wrote (h/t to NetsDaily) on the Nets on Tuesday. As Lewis alluded to, Brooklyn is once again expected to be one of the worst teams in the league despite
adding Randle to the team.
"With eight rookies on the Nets’ roster last season — including a record five first-round picks — they played those first-year pros a league-high 6,716 minutes," Lewis wrote when describing how much playing time the Nets' rookies saw last season. Lewis was essentially comparing Brooklyn's rebuild to those of the Sacramento Kings, Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trail Blazers, and Washington Wizards.
As of this writing, the Nets have 10 players that are 24 years old or younger with players like Egor Demin and Mikel Brown Jr. being the youngest players on the roster. For the Brooklyn fans wondering when the franchise is going to turn around and start competing for the playoffs, that will depend on which one of the young players is going to realize their potential along with when general manager Sean Marks decides to cash in the current draft stash to go after a star-level player.
The Nets didn't appear to be in the running for players like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jaylen Brown this summer so it seems like the team will have to wait for the next star-level player to change teams to see if they're successful in luring them to Brooklyn. In the meantime, Lewis pointing out the amount of playing time the young players have seen thus far could be a precursor to at least one of them taking the next step sooner rather than later.
This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: What could the Nets be looking at during this stage of the rebuild?
