The Brooklyn Nets are rolling out one of the more unusual Summer League groups in the league, and that’s put a bright spotlight on several of their young players in Las Vegas. With veterans and top scorers usually sitting these games out, Brooklyn has leaned heavily on its rookie class, including four of its five 2025 draft picks.
Egor Dёmin headlines that group, with Danny Wolf, Ben Saraf and Drake Powell also in the mix. Nolan Traoré was not included because of a knee issue. Alongside Mikel Brown Jr. and the rest of the rookie crop, the Nets have had a much bigger chunk of their future on the floor than most teams do at this stage.
Most of that group has held up well across the games in Sacramento and Las Vegas. Powell, though, has been the outlier for all the wrong reasons. The No. 22 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft has managed just 11 points over four contests, and the shooting line is brutal: 1-for-28 from the field and 0-for-14 from three.
His only made basket came against the Golden State Warriors’ Blue Team on July 6 in Sacramento. Through those four games, he’s averaging 2.8 points, 4.3 rebounds and 1.3 assists while shooting 4-0-83.
That’s rough, and there’s no real way around it. Powell’s early Summer League numbers have drawn plenty of attention online, and he hasn’t looked like the same player who flashed two-way promise last season. Against lesser competition, those traits haven’t shown up nearly enough.
Still, there’s a reason not to overreact too hard to this stretch. Rookie Summer League explosions get shrugged off all the time with a simple “It’s only Summer League,” and the same logic can apply here. These games don’t tell the whole story, especially when a young player is clearly testing parts of his game he wouldn’t normally lean on in Brooklyn’s real rotation.
That’s part of what’s happening with Powell. He’s spending a lot of time trying to create off the dribble, even though that isn’t what he does best and isn’t why the Nets drafted him. At North Carolina, he built his reputation as an efficient catch-and-shoot wing who could also bother opponents defensively.
That hasn’t fully shown up in Summer League, but the setting gives players room to experiment. Powell may be pressing, and that wouldn’t be unusual for a young player trying to prove himself. The Nets still believe there’s something there, and if he can work through this rough patch, Brooklyn could still have a real rotational guard on its hands.
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Randle did not sugarcoat the challenge ahead, and that is part of what makes his voice matter for a team trying to climb back into relevance. Brooklyn is still leaning into development while trying to add real structure around its younger pieces, and Randles arrival gives the Nets a more established presence as they try to turn potential into something sturdier, even if the next step may be more incremental than dramatic. [Read more 🡒]
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Joshua Jefferson Just Got His First Real Nets Test
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For Jefferson, it was also his first competitive game since March after an injury interrupted his spring and kept him from even getting practice reps. He sounded confident about how his game can translate into Brooklyns rotation, especially with the way he sees the floor and keeps the ball moving, but the bigger question is where that skill set fits once the roster is set and the minutes start getting divided up. [Read more 🡒]