NetsDaily Off-Season Report – No. 12

Every weekend, we’ll be updating the Nets’ off-season with bits and pieces of information, gossip, etc. to help fans get ready for … whatever.

It’s the end of the free agent moratorium and the vaunted seven-team deal is official. Nothing new in it for the Brooklyn Nets who folded the trade of its No. 36 pick to the Suns into the largest trade in NBA history.

Here’s best summary we’ve seen…

Still haven’t seen reports that the Nets two other trades have become official: Not the deal that’s bringing Terance Mann and the No. 22 pick (Drake Powell) to Brooklyn nor the one bringing Michael Porter Jr. and the Nuggets 2032 unprotected first to Brooklyn for Cam Johnson. The signings of both Day’Ron Sharpe and Ziaire Williams also have to be cleared. Once they’re done, Powell can sign his rookie deal.

As of 5:00 p.m. ET, there’s a lot of business left to pass through the league offices. So not to worry. As for Cam Thomas, we’ll let you know when we know. Same with any surprises.

Summer Time and the living is easy

The Summer League is upon us. Games begin Thursday vs. OKC. Four games are already scheduled. A fifth, part of the SL “playoffs,” will take place on July 18th or 19th.

We would expect that the five first rounders — Egor Demin, Nolan Traore, Drake Powell, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf — will get the bulk of the playing time early on but we wouldn’t be surprised if some of the five leave early. It’s not uncommon that teams don’t play their first rounders through the entirety of Summer League.

Who else do we expect to see beyond them? The Nets are already invested in three players who spent time with both Brooklyn and Long Island last season and are under contract: two-ways Tosan Evbuomwan and Tyson Etienne plus Drew Timme who is on a standard but non-guaranteed NBA deal.

Then, there’s Grant Nelson who played for North Dakota State then Alabama and who reportedly will get a chance to compete for the remaining two-way. An athletic big, he reportedly had opportunities to get drafted in the second round but told teams he preferred to go undrafted so he could sign with a team of his choice which became the Nets.

Another good bet is Quincy Olivari a 6’3” combo guard who played for the Lakers in Summer League and preseason last year, becoming a fan favorite, He secured a sneaker deal with Steph Curry’s Under Armour brand and during his May graduation at Xavier ripped open his gown to reveal a Lakers jersey. He was on a two-way deal when in January he was waived to help the Lake Show add to their big man depth. Laker fans expected him back in Las Vegas after he told Laker Nation last month that he planned to play in Summer League, but was careful to note that he wasn’t sure for who. Laker fans missed that nuance.

Finally, there’s the feel-good story of Terry Roberts. He’s getting his big chance a year and a half after being shot in a case of random violence then returned to Long Island in February of this year and played well for LI as it made a playoff run.

None of the Nets other non-guaranteed players — Jalen Wilson, last year’s Summer League MVP; Keon Johnson or Tyrese Martin will be on hand, nor will third-year players Dariq Whitehead or Noah Clowney. It’s not that common for third year players, even those as young as the Nets 20-year-olds to pass on Summer League. Similarly, it’s rare for head coaches to hold the reins in Las Vegas and so Steve Hetzel will be in the big chair for the second straight year. Last July, Jordi Fernandez was in Vegas, but prepping the Canadian national team for the Olympics.

It’s never a perfect proving ground, but Summer League will often become a showcase for guards, particularly point guards. They have the ball in their hands and often have the green light on offense. Offensive sets are basic adding to their freedom. Defense? Never heard of it. Of course, the Nets will have a LOT of guards in Vegas. Expect them to shine.

Once the last balls are put away in Las Vegas on July 20, the next competition we’re likely to be interested in is Eurobasket 2025 which will be played across four European countries: Cyprus, Finland, Poland and Latvia between August 27 and September 14. Ben Saraf is committed to the Israeli national team. Danny Wolf will pass and we don’t know the status of Nolan Traore who has played for French youth teams in the past. Russia is not participating.

After that interlude, the off-season desert continues through the last week of September when the Nets will get an early start on preseason training because of their commitment to NBA China games in Macao, October 10 and 12.

Ironman

The rivalry between the Nets and Knicks got a little juicier with the news that Mike Brown has been hired by the Knicks as their new head coach. Twice in his coaching career, Jordi Fernandez benefited from his relationship from Brown which began a decade ago when Brown, then head coach of the Cavaliers, watched as Fernandez trained his son, Elijah. He liked what what he saw and eventually hired Fernandez as a player development coach in 2009, then as head coach of the Cleveland G League team.

After a six-year stint with the Denver Nuggets where he worked with new Net Michael Porter Jr,, Brown brought him on board the Sacramento Kings staff in 2022. He rost to associate head coach before Sean Marks handed him the head coaching job in Brooklyn.

“He’s a mentor, but he’s more than that,” Fernandez said of Brown in November before their first match-up as rivals game. “He’s like family to me. I would not be in this position without him. And life is one big circle, right? He’s the one that brought me here, and then years later, we were back together.”

The Nets won that game and the Kings fired Brown not long after.

This week, Brian Windhorst revealed another dimension of the relationship going back to Fernandez’s early days in Cleveland.

“So, on Mike Brown — what you need to know about Mike Brown… and I don’t think he does this anymore, but it helps you understand a little bit about him: He, for years, used to bring his own iron on the road. He had this thing where he would iron — he would bring an ironing board too — because he had a specific ironing board. He definitely packed his preferred iron.

“And the man who was in charge of packing his iron was Jordi Fernandez. Jordi Fernandez was the lowest staffer on the Cavs’ staff — just over from Spain, looking for a foothold in the NBA. Jordi was kind of like… I don’t know what his role officially was, but he was basically Mike Brown’s gopher. I mean, he helped out in practices — he was doing some coaching — but he was also Mike Brown’s gopher. He was in charge of packing the iron. Mike had this thing where — before every game — he would have an ironing board set up in the coach’s office, home and road, and he would iron his own shirt. He wanted to be the one to iron it. It was like a zen thing for him — a routine to clear his mind before going out to the game.”

One big circle indeed like ironing.

Draftnik Gold Medal

So, we went back to our last mock draft round-up to see which of the draftniks did the best job in projecting the Nets picks. There was a clear winner: Jonathan Wasserman of Bleacher Report. This is before the Nets traded for the No. 22 pick, but Wasserman got three of the five right and all three close to where they wound up getting picked!

#8 – Noa Essengue, C/PF, 6’10” Ratiopharm Ulm

#19 – Nolan Traore, PG, 6’3” Saint-Quentin

#26 – Danny Wolf, C, 7’0” Michigan

#27 – Drake Powell, SF, 6’6”, North Carolina

#36 – Jamir Watkins, SG/SF, 6’7” Florida State

Extraordinary work, Jon. Indeed, no other mock got more than one right. Three of the nine mocks we tracked did have Traore going to the Nets somewhere in those mid-first slots. Only one, Yahoo! Sports, got Egor Demin, but not at No. 8. Instead, they had him at No. 19. Traore was mentioned by three of the mocks, Wolf by two.

And here’s another fun list, 247.com’s ranking of the top 100 collegiate prospects in 2024. The top six were all lottery picks in the 2025 NBA Draft. Now take a look at where Drake Powell was listed. No. 11. That was two ahead of Derek Queen, five ahead of Egor Demin, seven ahead of Kon Knueppel, 17 ahead of Carter Bryant, 25 ahead of Kasparas Jakučionis and 54 ahead of Jeremiah Fears, all taken before him. We’re read in a couple of places that fans should look more to his high school and AAU work than what he did at North Carolina where he played the good soldier role under head coach Hubert Davis (who it should be noted is his mother’s first cousin.)

Good Work

Peter Stern is the Chief Financial Officer of BSE, the parent company of the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and Barclays Center. Prior to joining BSE, Stern was Head of U.S. Investments at Alibaba Group. He previously had banking and finance jobs in New York, Beijing, Hong Kong and Sydney but there’s another side to Stern.

As his BSE Global bio notes:

Stern is known for his justice work at Sing Sing prison where he teaches financial literacy and acts as Senior Advisor to Hudson Link, the prison’s college program. Previously, Stern was active at San Quentin prison and remains Senior Advisor to The Last Mile which provides incarcerated individuals with business and technology training across six states.

We learned the last few day how Stern’s work has extended overseas to the prisons of Uganda, one of Africa’s most brutal regimes…

We’ve noted before that Clara Wu Tsai has been instrumental in the Meek Mill-inspired REFORM Alliance which has been lobbying states to change their parole and probation laws and with success. The alliance has helped over 800,000 people exit the justice system through the passage of 18 bipartisan bills in 11 states. These reforms focus on “transforming probation and parole systems by creating pathways for individuals to transition out of the justice system and into their communities.”

Wu Tsai is a founding partner of the alliance along with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Jay-Z and Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin and Mill. She has also contributed significant funding, by some accounts up to $10 million.

Rubin described recently how REFORM got started and how he recruited Wu Tsai and others…

Good work indeed.

Final Note

A community note: How to pronounce Egor Demin’s name straight from his mouth: