NetsDaily Off-Season Report – No. 19

WARNING: This Off-Season Report contains barely warranted enthusiasm and optimism. Proceed at your own risk.

There’s always anniversaries to speak of. And this month marks an important one for Nets fans trying to figure out where the organization stands and more importantly, where it’s headed. Twenty-five years ago, in August 2001, annual previews for the upcoming 2001-02 season hit the stands. You know those glossy magazines published by companies like Athlon Sports and Street & Smith’s. All but one of the four big publications that year projected the then-New Jersey Nets wouldn’t even make the playoffs … even with new addition Jason Kidd. The lone holdout had them barely making the post-season as the East’s eighth seed.

The annuals were not alone. Only one prominent pundit thought much of the combination of Kidd, KMart, KVH and Kerry. His name was Charles Barkley. Sir Charles thought Kidd would get them to the playoffs. No real surprise.

After all, New Jersey had won only 26 games the year before behind Stephon Marbury, a 24-year-old wunderkind from just across New York Harbor in Coney Island. Kidd was Kidd, a four-time All-Star, a three-time All-NBA selection, former Rookie of the Year but he had baggage … a lot of it. He had been arrested in January of that year for assaulting his wife in front his children. He was dispatched to East Rutherford for Marbury in July.

Of course, the Nets stunned the NBA that season behind the MVP runner-up, winning a franchise record 52 games, a mark that unfortunately still stands, getting to the NBA Finals the first of two straight times and sending beleaguered Nets fans into the basketball equivalent of Nirvana. They got swept by the Lakers but who cared? Been down so long looked like up to us.

No, we are not saying history will repeat itself in 2026-27. Nor are we comparing anyone on the current roster to JKidd. Few players to ever don an NBA uniform had his charisma, his toughness or his skillset. But to invoke Nets history again, we want to echo Joe Johnson’s famous preseason quote after the departure of Deron Williams a decade ago: “It ain’t that bad here.”

The point is simple: all the projections, predictions and even an insult from one of Hollywood’s biggest stars mean nothing before the games are played. Nada, zip, naught. The team that the Nets will put on the court this season will be decidedly different than last year. The roster has improved. The rookies have a year under their belts. They have two bigs capable of averaging 20/7/3 and two 20-year-old guards who were top 10 Draft picks. The Nets have never had either in their history.

They will present a more physical presence and more than enough assets to improve during the season if that’s what the brass wants to do. But most of all, they want to win this year after two years of desperately tanking to get a top lottery pick and before that a season when they didn’t seem to know what they wanted to do. It should be interesting, even fun.

Maybe it’s pollyannish to think this way. Probably is, when you consider what’s happened in the East this Summer with two All-NBA stars including LeBron James joining the 76ers, new faces in Miami, Toronto, Boston and an old one returning to Indiana. The Knicks are NBA champions and darlings of the city where they play. At the moment, the Nets are irrelevant, but that’s not a surprise. Nor should it be considered a permanent condition.

You have to trust the process and the hunger of a young roster with something to prove and a young head coach who’s intolerant of anything less than a full effort.

Another Nets great, Buck Williams said his week that maybe Joe Tsai’s comment about being embarrassed, first published in these very pages a week ago, will be the “fire” a young team needs to excel. We actually disagree. A team with nine players 22 or younger shouldn’t really need to be set alight. They should be hungry enough to prove themselves. Indeed, there’s every indication they want it. The kiddie corps leaders — Egor Demin and Mikel Brown Jr. — are saying all the right things and did all the right things as well in Summer League. SL head coach and Nets assistant Dutch Gaitley wasn’t exaggerating when he called MBJ’s performance “electric” … and not just on the court. He and Demin have charisma.

As Chaney Johnson, who was also a rook last year, told our Connor Long this week, the youngsters know what’s what.

“I just feel like we’re hungry,” said Johnson who at 24 is the team’s sixth oldest player. “They know — we realize how terrible of a team we were last year, or how terrible we did. I know ‘terrible’ is a strong word, so I don’t want to — but we weren’t the best team last year. So I feel like we’ve got that chip on our shoulder now, and we’re ready to prove some people wrong.”

This week, we also began to see a bit of a counter-narrative emerging about the team, at least in a couple of assessments of NBA front offices if not in power rankings. Although Sam Quinn of CBS Sports ranked Sean Marks & co. 16th out of 30, we found his opening line encouraging:

Brooklyn’s front office probably faces the biggest disparity between perception and reality of any in basketball. The prevailing narrative surrounding the Nets is that they’ve been poorly run and their outlook is bleak. True, they haven’t yet found any truly foundational players, but they have a clean cap sheet and a six-pick first-round draft surplus (not including swaps, though in fairness they owe their 2027 swap to the Houston Rockets). The reality is that this is a pretty promising blank slate if you’re willing to take the long view.

Similarly, Stephen Noh of the Sporting News gave the Nets an A+ for their assets although he ranked the Nets 21st in his assessment of where he thinks teams will be in 2029. He did say they could rank higher if they decided to be aggressive, as they almost certainly will be The other lesson we can take from 25 years ago is that one player can make a difference with a young team.

In the meantime, better to focus not on what an anonymous writer for FanDuel, ESPN’s projection of 18 wins (!!) or even what Marty Supreme thinks but on possibilities with the league’s youngest roster. There will be enough time during the season to make adjustments to your thinking.

Youth movement still a thing

It was our Connor Long who pressed Chaney Johnson late last week on what’s going on behind the doors of HSS Training Center. He gave a generalized and positive review of the Flatbush 5 and the Nets two bigs, the returning Michael Porter Jr. and the new guy, Julius Randle, but saved his highest compliments for Nolan Traore, the 6’4″ French guard who was the NBA’s sixth youngest player in 2025-26.

“Honestly, I’m going to have to say Nolan,” Johnson told Connor when asked about what he’s seen . “All the guys have improved, but I feel like Nolan … he’s a different guy now. He done put on some mass. He’s walking around with a sleeveless hoodie on, looking at the biceps, you know what I’m saying? He done put on some strength.”

Troare of course didn’t play in either Summer League, not Sacramento nor Las Vegas. He was still recovering from a post-season scope — arthroscopic surgery — on his right knee. But C.J. also said nice things about how Drake Powell, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf were playing in scrimmages at HSS.

That might have been a surprise to those fans who watched the Nets Summer League games. None of the three were lighting up the arenas in either league. While Egor Demin and Mikel Brown Jr. drew raves, particularly when playing together, there were a LOT of missed shots being thrown up by the picks taken at Nos. 22, 26 and 27. Indeed, it seemed that Powell and Wolf had regressed from the end of last season.

One Nets insider excused their failings by saying they just “need more time” in development, that the worries many fans shared among themselves were not shared by the team’s development types. Of course, development is critical to the Nets plans for what Joe Tsai and Sean Marks have called “sustainable success.” So they’d better succeed. The organization is counting on a steady stream of rookies making their way through cheap four-year contracts, permitting it to push in all their chips when the opportunity to acquire stars arises.

Indeed, the Nets will have eight players on rookie deals this season, from Mikel Brown Jr, at age 20 ,the team’s youngest player by seven weeks, to Noah Clowney, who just turned 22 last month. In fact, it seems likely that the Nets will once again have the youngest roster in the NBA. Last year’s was the youngest in two decades!

Here in order are Brooklyn’s 17 players by age, including two-ways. Those with asterisks are on rookie deals.

— Mikel Brown Jr., 20*

— Nolan Traore, 20*

— Ben Saraf, 20*

— Egor Demin, 20*

— Drake Powell, 20*

— Noah Clowney, 22*

— Danny Wolf, 22*

— Tyler Bilodeau, 22

— Joshua Jefferson, 22*

— Josh Minott, 23

(All 10 players above this line are younger than Yaxel Lindeborg, the Warriors pick at No. 11 in the June Draft.)

— Chaney Johnson, 24

— Day’Ron Sharpe, 24

(All 12 players above this line are younger than the NBA average.)

— Keon Ellis, 26

— Michael Porter Jr., 28

— Moe Wagner, 29

— Terance Mann, 29

— Julius Randle, 31.

There are a few aspects of the list that jump out beyond just the obvious one how young they are. Five of them can’t legally buy a beer! One is that, as the Nets insider noted, there’s time, lot of it, for lots of players on the roster to get a lot better. No guarantees but suggesting that they only need time seems less of an excuse than a rationale for patience. You know, hope.

Another is where Clowney sits on the list: the sixth youngest player on the youngest team in the NBA despite having played nearly 3,200 minutes in the NBA. However, Clowney has the least amount of time to prove himself. He will be a restricted free agent next July. He didn’t play that badly last season, averaging 12.3 points on 40/33/80 splits while grabbing 4.3 boards in 66 games, 60 starts. But he has been disappointing in large part because of what he’s shown on occasion, those seven three’s vs. the Knicks in November of last year and those seven blocks vs. the Raptors in 2024.

Said one NBA scout who followed him since his days at Alabama. “I loved him in college. Loved him when he was drafted,” he said. “Wish he was further along.”

The scout added that aside from Clowney’s occasional shot blocking, he’s “soft on defense.” Where does he fit this season? Back-up to MPJ? back-up to Randle? a 6’10” wing? A rim-runner and protector? If he advances and justifies that scout’s love, it could be a big help to Brooklyn this season and beyond.

One other aspect we found interesting: Minott’s youth. Like Clowney, the 23-year-old could provide the Nets with some depth up front and on the wing. Also, like Clowney, he started young in the NBA and has a wealth of NBA experience despite his youth. In four seasons, he’s played nearly 1,300 minutes, more than half last of them — 834 — last season with Boston and Brooklyn.

After the Nets got him for the bargain basement price of $110,000 from the Celtics in a classic salary dump, he played with enough skill and energy to warrant a two-year. $9 million deal with the second year a team option. He averaged 10.8 points on 49/40/80 shooting splits in 16 games with the Nets who chose him over Ziaire Williams, opting out of Z’s $6.3 million second year.

The question is whether there will be minutes for the two forwards aged 22 and 23? Like a lot of questions with such a young roster, that’s a good thing. Same with the backcourt if Demin, Brown Jr. and Traore develop.

Rising tide of money engulfing Brooklyn?

The changes in ownership at the Los Angeles Lakers, the defining NBA franchise (sorry again, Knick fans), is once again altering the NBA financial landscape. A valuation of $12.5 billion for the Lake Show will cause other franchises values to jump as well. A rising tide, you know, lifts all boats. It already has. Marc Lore, Alex Rodriguez’s partner in owning the Timberwolves, sold his stake in the Minnesota club to San Francisco investment banker Marc Stad at a valuation of $4.5 billion, three times what he paid a mere five years back.

If the Nets were worth $6.2 billion — per Sportico — prior to the Lakers’ sale, then they are more than likely worth closer to $8 billion now. That’s a huge profit for the Tsais who closed on the Nets and Barclays Center in 2019 for $3.3 billion. Indeed, that estimate might be low considering there’s been recent speculation at the two new franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas will likely require prospective owners to put up as much as $8 billion to join the club as the 31st and 32nd franchises. (And we’re not even talking about the Liberty.)

Is that a good thing for the Nets and their fans? At least for now, it would seem so. The Nets, through Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, are among the more stable franchises in terms of finances, despite word that Joe and Clara Wu Tsai are divorcing. The Tsais’ investments in pro sports, in everything from the Nets and Liberty to minor stakes in the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and an international catamaran racing team, were featured in a story we wrote a little more that a year ago and updated since in these pages. One of the more telling indicators of just how committed he’s been was this line from that July 2o25 story:

Bloomberg News breakdown of Joe Tsai’s net worth, which the news site estimated at $9.1 billion, puts the value of his sports assets, primarily the holdings of Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, at a conservative $4.85 billion, amounting to 52% of his overall holdings. Bloomberg valued his holdings in Alibaba — 1.4% of the Chinese e-commerce giant’s stock — at nearly a billion dollars less: $3.95 billion.

His single biggest asset, said Bloomberg, is not his Alibaba stock but the Nets.

He’s said both publicly and privately that he sees sports and particularly the Nets as the “family business,” a legacy. He and Clara recently stated that despite the dissolution of their marriage they expect their three adult children will be involved in BSE over the long term. All three have sports backgrounds. Thiers isn’t so much a corporate investment like the one Mark Walter and his Guggenheim partners made in the Lakers 14 months ago then sold under duress to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner this month. (No doubt the Tsais are also taking lessons from what’s happening with the Buss family following the sale.)

For the want of a better term, the Tsai family appear to fall, at least for now, into the “sportsman” category of owners rather than the “investor” category. They have continued putting money in their teams and their infrastructure while selling small pieces to others among the mega-rich whether the Koch family in the case of BSE or Jack Ma and a group of prominent business women in the case of the Liberty.

That certainly doesn’t mean the Tsais are likely to be conservative. They remain ambitious in Brooklyn as recent events have shown.

Beyond what we’ve already seen — the four-year, $150 million worth of renovations at Barclays Center, the $80 million Liberty training facility underway on Newtown Creek in Greenpoint and the eight-figure revamping of Modell’s as a youth training facility— there’s still the somewhat amorphous and yet-to-be announced plans for what’s what’s been called an arena-centric “ecosystem,” an ambitious accumulation that could include a hotel, conference center, marketplace, restaurants, etc.

There hasn’t been much made of the plan since Sam Zussman spoke to Bloomberg News about it in October 2024, but 10 days ago, Peter Stern, BSE’s chief financial officer, mentioned it again in CFO Magazine when discussing differences between what an NBA team CFO’s job entailed a quarter century ago versus now:

First is adjacent opportunities. So in the timeframe you mention, whatever basketball team it was, whatever arena it played in, the focus was on that team and that arena. How much food and beverage are we selling when people come into the arena? What are the per caps?

Now, teams are thinking about how they can make their customers’ experience better before the game and after the game. Should I have a restaurant down the block? Should I have an entertainment opportunity after the game? You’ve seen that done in Chicago with the Cubs, for instance, where the organization literally bought up the land all around, or what the Buffalo Bills are doing with new mixed-use facilities that they’re building.

And indeed, BSE just announced a “restaurant down the block.” It’s partnering with Casa Tua, a well-known hospitality brand out of Miami to create Cucina by Casa Tua at One Hanson Place in the lobby of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, a property acquired at a foreclosure sale in 2024. It’s described as “located just steps from Barclays Center.” Beyond the restaurant scheduled to open next year, there are plans for it to anchor “a broader mix of hospitality, dining, and experiential offerings to be announced at a later date,” said the press release. They also invested in the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre.

And yes, as Marks has said of his boss, he is ready to invest when needed in the team, having already proven it during the glory days of the Big Three, shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars in luxury taxes.

So now, whether you’re a fan of the Tsais’ ownership or not, there’s no indication that the rising tide of money will engulf the Brooklyn Nets (or New York Liberty.) Indeed, it’s the opposite.

Final Note

The WNBA will be taking their bi-annual FIBA break permitting international players to take a couple of weeks off to play for their national teams in the women’s World Cup which this year takes place in Berlin…

As part of the Cup celebrations, FIBA has released a 55-minute documentary on the history of women’s basketball. And one of the key elements in the video is the budding friendship between two Liberty players, both stars of their respective national teams, Marine Johannes of France and Han Xu of China…