Here’s a bold prediction: with their current roster, the Brooklyn Nets are capable of winning at least 20 games this season. I.e, better than the Washington Wizards. The reasoning is simple: they have two players who can score in bunches. Cam Thomas and Michael Porter Jr., an NBA champion not long ago, may not always inspire confidence with their decision-making or defense. Still, no one can deny their ability to put up 30 points on any given night.
Add to that center Nic Claxton, the kind of player a contender would love to start or bring off the bench, along with Terance Mann, Haywood Highsmith (once he returns from injury), Day’Ron Sharpe, and Ziaire Williams. That’s a group of legitimate NBA players.
Another reason not to dismiss the Nets entirely is head coach Jordi Fernández. The Spaniard led last year’s depleted roster to 26 wins, arguably a coaching job too good for a team trying to secure a top draft position.
That unexpected relative success had consequences: Brooklyn landed only at No. 8 in the 2025 draft. But they weren’t done. The Nets shockingly decided to keep all their picks, becoming the first team in NBA history to select five players in the first round of a single draft: Egor Demin, Nolan Traoré, Drake Powell, Ben Sarf, and Danny Wolf. All five are expected to suit up this season. These aren’t just any first-rounders: Three of them are point guards; Three were born in 2006; One was born in 2005. In other words: extremely young.
To that mix, Brooklyn added Kobe Bufkin in a trade with Atlanta after two injury-plagued seasons. He’s 23 years old, a year older than returning Nets prospects Dariq Whitehead and Noah Clowney.
This means Brooklyn will not only be one of the youngest teams in the league, but will likely entrust the most demanding position, point guard, to the youngest players on the roster, who will compete against each other for minutes. That is not what a team that’s trying to win usually does.
Fernández himself tried to play down the positional overlap:
“All these guys can really pass the ball. All those paint touches and ball reversals, it just helps you when you have not only primary ballhandlers but also secondary ballhandlers, and all these guys can do it.”
It’s the right message, consistent with his emphasis on ball movement and defensive aggressiveness. But the question is how this philosophy fits with Cam Thomas, who last season averaged 18.2 field-goal attempts per game in 25 appearances, a number that would have ranked him 11th in the league, just behind Jalen Brunson and ahead of LeBron James, had he played enough games.
The Nets probably don’t view Thomas as part of their future. He turned down a low-ball extension offer and instead signed a one-year, $6 million qualifying offer. That makes him a young (turning 24 just before the season), disgruntled scorer who becomes an unrestricted free agent at season’s end.
Thomas’s presence could hurt Brooklyn’s young core development, but paradoxically, that may help their long-term tank. A confusing dynamic, but one that could end with the team shelving him or flipping him in a trade. Anyway, unlike last year, management seems determined not to let Fernández’s competitiveness derail their draft goals. The real tanking begins now.