Making the case for Egor Dëmin

The Brooklyn Nets shocked the world by taking Egor Demin with the eighth pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. Here’s how it could all work out for the best.

There are over 2,000 comments on my main takeaways from the Brooklyn Nets’ historic 2025 NBA Draft, during which they made a record five first-round picks, starting with Egor Dëmin at #8.

I called that particular selection “unfathomable” with the subtext, of course, being “unfathomably bad.”

We are now getting ready for the most anticipated Las Vegas Summer League in the history of franchise. Dëmin and his cohorts are no longer prospects, or even draftees. They are Brooklyn Nets, and deserved to be judged as such.

For a moment, consider Coby White and Jordan Poole, drafted #7 and #28 respectively in 2019. Coby White finished #5 in ROY voting, then averaged 15 PPG in his sophomore season while Poole played one-third of his minutes in the G league. Then Poole became an indispensable part of a championship team, averaging nearly a 20 a night on 60% true shooting while White’s numbers and role decreased on a decent team. Now in 2025, who would you rather have?

We won’t know how to judge Brooklyn’s 2025 NBA Draft for a long time. In the present day, Dëmin is a 19-year-old rookie who will handle the ball often. He’ll struggle, often. That’s just how it is. But every play he makes will not be a referendum on his draft slot.

So let’s make the case for Egor Dëmin.

Very broadly, height + passing + shooting = good. This is what the Brooklyn Nets believe they’re getting in Dëmin, less concerned with projecting a specific role but simply trusting that the shot will come along, and that he’ll find ways to to add passing value anytime he touches the ball.

Though Egor Dëmin made just 27.3% of attempts at BYU, though his historical data suggests that may have been somewhere between an outlier and a result of taking so many difficult, off-the-dribble attempts…

Really though, he took a ton of attempts in general — over nine per 100 possessions. And his form isn’t broken to the point where anybody who isn’t a shot doctor would notice something wrong. The ball comes off his hands quite nicely, it seems.

There is also his now-legendary NBA Combine, where, in one drill, the Russian teenager made 16 threes in 35 seconds. If the shot never comes along, those numbers will live next to the chair that couldn’t guard Yi Jianlian in infamy, but it is a promising sign. Said Sean Marks: “I saw him up close and personal in his individual workouts, and other workouts that we had here with the group, and was able to compare what we saw during the season to what we saw now, and the uptick and the improvement that we saw was pretty outstanding.”

But in going back to Egor Dëmin’s film over the past couple seasons, it wasn’t the shooting that stood out. It was his craft using high ball-screens and in dribble-handoff situations, a skill beyond his years that could mitigate some of the issues he’ll have facing intense ball pressure…

Indeed, that clip does start with a tough pull-up three. Dëmin will likely need a talented screener, particularly early in his career, to get the most out of pick-and-roll possessions, perhaps another reason to look for a Nic Claxton trade.

This is no slight to Dëmin. We know the handle and explosion is less than ideal for a primary ball-handler in the NBA. But if the shooting is scary enough to prevent defenders from going under a screen, and if he gets the most out of each and every one, he’ll be able to offset some of those deficiencies.

I absolutely love this play against Mississippi out of ‘stack’ pick-and-roll, which features a back-screen for the roller…

Dëmin gets all the way to the rim with a strong two-foot finish, but sets it up by coming off the first screen, seeing a switch, then changing direction and nearly using another defender as a quasi-screen. There’s no crazy explosion or even high-level floor-reading on display, but just savvy at the point of attack. Now there’s a skill I trust Dëmin to bring to the NBA.

Per Synergy Sports, the last time a pick-and-roll wasn’t Dëmin’s most frequented type was in the 2022-23 season for Real Madrid’s under-18 team. Bear with me now. Dëmin played just eight games for that squad, turning 17 during the season. He was lower on the pecking order, playing next to more experienced ball-handlers and often spotting up from deep.

He shot 15-of-36, or 41.7%, on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers with that squad…

Now, that’s a preposterously small sample size, but it was part of a larger two-year span of shooting 36% from deep as a professional in Spain. I also found him to display some noteworthy cutting skills and have a refined sense of spacing, especially for a teenager.

Again, though nearly all of Dëmin’s ball-handling opportunities at BYU came as an initiator, the bet here is that his passing skills will translate all over the court. There have been glimpses already…

As a plus-passer and hopefully good shooter, Dëmin must be a high-usage player to succeed. Think: new-age combo-guard.

The Brooklyn Nets currently have an unsigned restricted free agent who models the old combo-guard. Cam Thomas can put the ball in the hoop when his shot is falling, but doesn’t quite have the ball-handling and passing acumen to be a full-time primary ball-handler. That’s okay, but he’s a little undersized and defensively weak to be a true complementary guard, and his off-ball skills leave a bit to be desired, though I do maintain he’s made significant strides in just about all of the above.

Egor Dëmin could be the inverse of that archetype. Today’s NBA, as evidenced by the 2025 Playoffs we just watched is emphasizing size and efficient decision-making from all five players on the court, He’ll never be the scorer that Cam Thomas is, and he has a long way to go to even be the player present-day Thomas is.

However, the screen craft and vision out of pick-and-roll could allow him to handle a great many of his team’s possessions. But Dëmin, buoyed by a strong jumper and off-ball movement skills, could also slide off the ball while maintaining his value as a passer. Against the best defenses in the league, teams need to make three or four crisp decisions on any given possession to generate a good shot.

Of course, Dëmin also stands just taller than 6’8”, and while he’ll never be a true hound on the point-of-attack, solid positional length and instincts could make him a passable, maybe even good defender on the backline. After all, if he’s guarding wings and forwards more often, his defensive rebounds will turn into pristine outlet passes the other way.

At his introductory press conference, Dëmin envisioned both the future of the Nets and his role on it: “Obviously because it’s a lot of athleticism, young guys, and I believe we could be a really high pace and high volume team, right? Just being able to run coast to coast. And for me, how efficient can I find those defensive rebounds and just find the outlet as fast as I can? Find somebody in front of me who can finish at the rim or find the corners, right, since we’re going to learn a lot of spacing.”

Brooklyn took Egor Dëmin with the eighth pick to truly kickstart the next era of Nets basketball. That’s all said and done. Historically speaking, at least one player drafted behind Dëmin is very likely to have a better NBA career than him, but Dëmin is also quite likely to have a better career than at least one player drafted ahead of him. That’s how it goes.

But the pathway to the 19-year-old Dëmin putting together a fantastic NBA career is this:

• His savvy not just as a passer, but as a ball-handler will mitigate some of his subpar burst
• Obviously, the shooting comes along, and these two skills in conjunction make him a viable primary ball-handler…
• …for at least some of the time. The rest of his possessions will be productive because positional size and smarts allow him to survive on defense and excel off the ball as a cutter, shooter, and extra passer.

Dëmin may not be a candidate to average 25/7/7 like the mega-creators littered across the NBA. But he could establish his own brand of offensive ingenuity by constantly uplifting his team’s offense no matter the role. By making good decision after good decision, no matter what that decision entails. After all, he had many flaws at BYU, but he captained the Cougars to a top-5 offensive rating in all of NCAA basketball, and that didn’t happen by accident.

“I want to play beautiful, I want to play pretty, I want to play efficient. And for me, there’s never a sacrifice of myself for the team, or something like this. It’s about making the right decision, which I’m always trying to do.” — Egor Dëmin, draft night, 2025