The Brooklyn Nets are out of the spotlight for now, but one part of their rebuild is going to come under the microscope next season: the 2025 draft class.
Brooklyn has already added Julius Randle to the mix, and the franchise is still very much in the early stages of its reset. Even so, the Nets’ long-term plan is going to be judged by what happens with the young players they’ve stockpiled, especially after making five first-round picks in the 2025 draft.
Grant Hughes of Bleacher Report sees Egor Demin as the most likely of that group to turn promise into production.
"Egor Demin is the likeliest of Brooklyn's 2025 selections to make good on his potential. He proved he could stripe it from deep and make the right connective passes last season, and his Summer League performance showed he'd added new dimensions as an attacker and inside-the-arc finisher," Grant Hughes wrote for Bleacher Report on the Nets.
That’s the good news for Brooklyn. The tougher question is what comes next for the rest of the class.
"To put it charitably, the jury is still out on the rest of Brooklyn's first-rounders. Nolan Traore, Drake Powell, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf are all in line for pivotal second seasons," Hughes continued. "You don't make final determinations on sophomores, especially when their developmental paths are complicated by so much positional overlap."
This summer gave the Nets a closer look at Powell, Saraf and Wolf against NBA competition. Traore missed the California Classic and Las Vegas Summer League after undergoing a scope on his right knee, so Brooklyn didn’t get that same evaluation of him in live action.
Still, the overall impression around the league hasn’t exactly been glowing.
"But Brooklyn needs to see something promising from at least one of these guys to validate its controversial approach of making (and keeping) five first-round selections in the 2025 draft," Hughes wrote.
That’s the crux of it. The Nets have drafted eight players over the past two seasons, and with Tyler Bilodeau on a Two-Way deal, they’ll need to find minutes for seven of their youngest players. Next season won’t just be about development - it will be about whether Brooklyn’s big draft gamble starts paying off.
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Mid-January brings another test, this one on the road and against a string of playoff contenders. For a team trying to stay in the postseason conversation, those stretches can do more than reveal depth and stamina, they can shape the entire arc of the season. The Nets do not just need to survive the grind, they need to come out of it with enough momentum to keep the standings from getting away from them. [Read more 🡒]