RUMOR ROUND-UP III: Would Brooklyn Nets keep all five of their first rounders?

Game within the game or reality…

The conventional wisdom is simple: You can’t develop five first round picks, let alone that plus a second rounder … and two 20-year-olds in Noah Clowney and Dariq White who are younger than about a third of the 59 players who’ll be taken tonight.

It’s mostly about development. The tendency is to work hard on the top picks, while the others can sometime languish. That can lead to big mistakes down the road. As Simone Casali, the Nets director of international scouting said last year.

“We must not underestimate how history is full of players who struggled in their first team and then exploded in the second because there they found the right situation and the right context. You can make mistakes for no reason or get it right simply by luck,” he told Dario Ronzulli of FIP.it. in December.

Five firsts would also cost the Nets $19.7 million, a significant piece of their remaining cap space although there are ways to manipulate signings to get around that math.

Last night’s trade for the No. 22 pick and Terance Mann brought the question into even sharper focus. The Brooklyn Nets now have more firsts — five of them at Nos. 8, 19, 22, 26 and 27 — than any team in NBA history going into a Draft, reports ESPN. They also have a second at No. 36. And remember, the 2025 draft is seen as generational.

This morning, two of the more cerebral draftniks raised the possibility that the Nets could defy history and take all five firsts.

Wrote ESPN’s Jonathan Givony and Jeremy Woo this morning in their latest mock draft:

The Nets are signaling to teams around the NBA that it’s unlikely they move down from this pick, as they are guaranteed to end up landing a player they’ve targeted throughout the draft process. The front office is not deterred by the idea of adding five first-rounders, a scenario that is certainly in play right now. There’s a “wide open space” in Brooklyn for young players to come in and compete for immediate playing time with a coaching staff led by Jordi Fernandez that is friendly to the idea of developing young talent.

Similarly, Rafael Barlowe of NBA Big Board said he had heard from an agent that such a strategy is on the table.

The Nets now hold five first-round picks. Yes, five. While conventional wisdom suggests they’ll package a few to move up or grab future capital, one agent I spoke with—who has multiple clients projected in the 15–30 range—told me the opposite.

Based on what he’s hearing, Brooklyn is preparing to use all five selections. That could change with one phone call, of course, but it gives you a window into how unpredictable tonight could get.

Barlowe does also note this:

While one agent insisted Brooklyn is preparing to keep all five of its first-rounders, another sees the move through a different lens. That agent believes the Nets are stacking assets to give themselves the firepower to move up from No. 8—with their eyes locked on Rutgers star Ace Bailey.

Keeping all five would indeed constitute the big swing that many fans crave, but how real is the possibility? Sean Marks loves the game within the game, the NBA basketball court as chess board. Could this be a head fake whose direction we don’t understand?

Most draftniks believe there is no way any team would go in this direction? Zach Harper of The Athletic/New York Times encapsulated the counter argument.

I can’t imagine the Nets are going to utilize all five of those picks because that would just be ridiculous. Developing five such players at once is asking a lot. But the Nets are in a position to package those picks to either move up or add selections for teams that need cost-effective depth on rookie deals…

Of course, the most rumored scenario is the one where the Nets are gathering picks to make an offer the 76ers can’t refuse for the No. 3 and the opportunity to take Ace Bailey, the 6’9” Rutgers power forward. Bailey has still, as far as we know, not worked for any NBA team. There’s been ample reporting that he doesn’t want to join the 76ers and Givony reports this morning, the teams that hold the Nos. 4 and 5 picks hold no lure for him, either.

Bailey, who ranks No. 3 on our big board, is the only U.S. prospect who has yet to visit an NBA team facility, continuing to decline workout invites from Philadelphia, Charlotte and Utah, and seemingly preferring the group of teams ranked outside the top five, specifically Washington, New Orleans and Brooklyn at Nos. 6-8.

Erik Slater of Clutch Points tweets that Brooklyn is making calls, even to the San Antonio Spurs who hold the No. 2 and intend to take Dylan Harper, Bailey’s Rutgers teammate.

Numerous reports, however, indicate that the Spurs are locked in on Harper and aren’t budging.

Meanwhile, Shams Charania, Givony’s colleague included Brooklyn in a list of final destinations for Bailey…

That of course is a wide range.

Jake Fischer, writing for The Stein Line, says he believes that there is at least one player who wants to wear the black-and-white.

I believe that Jeremiah Fears, if he’s still at No. 8, will be a Brooklyn Net. There’s been so much noise throughout this process that the Nets are Fears’ preferred landing spot. It’s been one of the more persistent items of Intel dating all the way back to the Chicago Draft Combine in May. Fears did visit New Orleans and Utah and his selection range seems to start at No. 5. I firmly believe that range ends with Brooklyn.

On the other end of who loves who, Fischer thinks that the Nets love Cedric Coward but is unlikely to be on the board at No. 19 unless…

I believe Coward won’t be on the board for Brooklyn, which is known to covet him at No. 19 if the Nets retain that pick. League sources say Coward is generating interest as high as No. 11 in Portland and is said to have worked out multiple times for the Thunder. Maybe the Nets, if they’re really that keen on landing Coward, could move into the middle of the first round by trading some of their later picks.

Meanwhile, draftniks are all updating their mocks following the Nets-Hawks-Celtics trade. Cyro Asseo de Choch does an aggregate mock draft of 10 mocks for Hoopshype. Here’s what that tells him as of noon.

—#8: Khaman Maluach, 7’2” C, Duke

—#19: Nique Clifford, 6’7” SF, Colorado State

—#22: Jase Richardson, 6’1” PG, Michigan State

—#26: Hugo Gonzalez, 6’7” SF, Real Madrid

—#27: Drake Powell, 6’6” SF, North Carolina

—#36: Hansen Yang, 7’2” C, Qingdao Eagles

Not much new there. The names of those six players have been tossed about social media for months, just in different orders.

Is there a precedent for the Nets using a lot of picks? There is, sort of. Back in 2021, the Nets went into the Draft with five picks: two firsts at Nos. 27 and 29 and three seconds at Nos. 44, 49 and 59. In that case too no one expected the Nets to roster all of them. That turned out to be true: While Cam Thomas (#27), Day’Ron Sharpe (#29) and to a lesser degree Kessler Edwards (#44), got NBA playing time in Brooklyn, Rai’Quan Gray (#49) played only one game for the Nets and Marcus Zegarowski (#59) never made an NBA appearance. The two did play for the Long Island Nets.

Big difference between five firsts and six picks in the top 40 to two firsts and three seconds all between Nos. 25 and 60.