The Brooklyn Nets have spent the past few years in a strange middle ground: no longer chasing a title, but not exactly starting from scratch either. Once the team moved on from James Harden, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, the rebuild became unavoidable, and for the most part the front office has been given credit for navigating that shift. Even so, not everyone around the league is sold on where things stand now.
CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn still placed Brooklyn in the bottom half of the NBA’s front-office rankings, slotting the Nets 16th in the league. He acknowledged that the organization has been better than it often gets credit for, but also made clear he doesn’t see a finished product.
“Now, they're still in the bottom half of these rankings. The Nets are way better than they get credit for, but that doesn't mean they're perfect,” Sam Quinn wrote of the Nets for CBS Sports.
The biggest issue, in Quinn’s view, is what Brooklyn has and hasn’t found in the draft. He pointed to the fact that the Nets have tied a large part of their future to landing a cornerstone in either the 2025 or 2026 drafts, only to miss out on a top-five pick.
“They banked so much of their future on landing a cornerstone in either the 2025 or 2026 drafts. They didn't get a top-five pick, and it just isn't clear what their new plan is,” Quinn continued with his criticism of Brooklyn's current rebuild with the players on the current roster. “That's a bit of a problem in light of how baffling components on their last two offseasons have been.”
Brooklyn did pour major resources into the 2025 NBA Draft, using five first-round picks on the class. The headliner was guard Egor Demin, taken No. 8 overall. Coming out of last season, the broad view around the league seems to be that Demin is the only clear hit among those five selections, though there are still reasonable cases to be made for guard Nolan Traore and forward Danny Wolf becoming useful NBA players down the line.
There is also plenty of skepticism around forward Drake Powell and guard Ben Saraf, with many questioning whether either will become a rotation player. Still, the Nets are expected to use the upcoming season to find out what they have. Sean Marks has repeatedly framed patience as the guiding principle of the rebuild, and with so much invested in the 2025 draft, this year will be the first real test of whether those bets start paying off.
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Cam Whitmore Suddenly Feels Like A Nets Fit To Watch
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The Nets are one of the clubs worth watching if Whitmore does become available. Brooklyn has a clear need for young scoring help on the wing, and Whitmores profile lines up with the kind of upside swing that makes sense for a team still sorting out its long-term core. Charlotte is another possible landing spot, but from Brooklyns perspective, this is exactly the sort of opportunity that can go from theoretical to very real in a hurry. [Read more 🡒]
Nets Still Face One Brutal Question After A Quiet Offseason
The Nets spent the offseason piecing together a new look, adding Julius Randle in a trade, signing Keon Ellis and Moe Wagner, and using the draft to bring in Mikel Brown Jr., Joshua Jefferson and Tyler Bilodeau. After two seasons that produced a combined 118 losses, Brooklyn is betting that a mix of veterans such as Randle and Michael Porter Jr. and a handful of young prospects can at least move the group toward respectability.
Still, the real test is less about the names on the roster and more about what happens when the games start to count. Brooklyn opens preseason Oct. 6 against the Hornets, then gets Charlotte again in the home opener on Oct. 21, and those early dates should offer the first real clues about whether this quiet reset has enough structure to hold up once the schedule tightens. [Read more 🡒]
Nets Fans Are Split On What This Season Really Means
The Nets head into the new season carrying the kind of weight that comes with a long rebuild and a fan base that has learned to read between the lines. After finishing with 20 wins and missing the postseason again, Brooklyn still has Joe Tsai and Sean Marks preaching patience, even as the roster has been reshaped with names like Julius Randle and Michael Porter Jr. and the outside world keeps trying to assign a timetable to the turnaround.
There is some real intrigue here, because the roster has enough recognizable talent to make a leap feel possible, but not enough certainty to quiet the doubts. Oddsmakers have set the bar around 24.5 wins, which says plenty about how the league views the Nets right now, and it leaves Brooklyn stuck in the middle of two different conversations: whether this is the start of something more serious, or just another season of waiting for the rebuild to show its hand. [Read more 🡒]