What did we learn from Brooklyn Nets’ rookies at Las Vegas Summer League?

At long last, 2k26 Summer League gave us our first taste of the Brooklyn Nets’ future. So what did we learn?

Las Vegas Summer League is not the most predicate stage for a young player’s career. Brooklyn Nets fans enticed by Egor Dëmin’s 3-point shooting exhibition in Vegas, where he went 10-of-23 in just three games and made some deep ones off the catch, should probably avoid this graphic courtesy Owen Philips and his wonderfully analytical Substack, F5…

As you can see, how well players — rookies specifically — shoot the ball in Vegas and how well they shoot it on the big stage just don’t have a strong correlation. One of Egor Dëmin’s 3-point makes at Summer League hit the back of the rim, bounced ten feet skyward, then fell back in. A normal bounce on that shot, and he’s just 9-of-23 from deep in Vegas, the percentage dropping over four points.

In short: minuscule sample size. And yet, Dëmin looked like a shooter in July. He took shots that a threatening NBA shooter would take, and swished many of them. The ball came cleanly off his hands. Is that really nothing?

Egor Dëmin

I don’t think so. Las Vegas Summer League only reaffirmed my belief that the Russian teenager will take as many threes as Jordi Fernández directs him to in his rookie season. Even if he has to take them off the dribble. See: my favorite moment of Brooklyn’s summer…

In Keith Smith’s wonderful piece from Monday, where he dropped plenty of quotes from NBA personnel, including a meaty section on Brooklyn, he quoted a Nets coach as saying Dëmin’s “role here (Summer League) was WAY different than what we’re going to ask him to do in the regular season. But that’s what this is for, right? We tasked him to shoot it from deep and to shoot it a lot. He did exactly as he was asked. We know about the playmaking. This was a chance to see if he could get his shot off against NBA-level defenders. He did and those shots went in a lot too.”

On one hand, Dëmin’s pick-and-roll frequency was way down from his time at BYU, and his spot-up opportunities way up.

But I don’t buy that Brooklyn simply didn’t ask him to make plays off the dribble. Dëmin took just four two-point shots and two free-throws at Las Vegas Summer League in 75 total minutes. He had just four assists as well; I don’t think any coach was telling him to be quite that passive with the ball in his hands.

I also don’t think those numbers were for a lack of trying…

Egor Demin doesn’t get into the paint yet, and relative to his Summer League performance, that’s fine. An even bigger question in his pre-draft profile than the 3-point shooting — which has historically been fine in his pre-BYU career — was his ability to handle the ball on the perimeter and create driving angles vs. his primary defender. Nothing has changed just yet.

In the regular season, Dëmin will likely play a smaller share of his minutes next to Nolan Traoré and/or Ben Saraf than he did in Vegas. Maybe that means he handles the ball more, or maybe Jordi Fernández will just be able to design more ball-screen situations for him, like he did for Cam Johnson a season ago.

But I don’t really see why “playmaking” and getting “his shot off against NBA-level defenders” have to be mutually exclusive. After all, Dëmin’s gonna have to do both to be a good pro. Baby steps, I guess.

Elsewhere, I do think Dëmin showed solid flashes of positional defending, jumping a couple passing lanes and walling up at the rim.

Nolan Traoré

After a long season in the LNB Élite, Nolan Traoré had to play just a bit more basketball before getting to enjoy a well-deserved offseason. And at Summer League, he showed why he was the #19 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, or at least what Brooklyn is hoping to get out of him in the coming years.

The ball-handling + speed combination is real, and Traoré can make some impressive kick-out passes while hurtling toward the rim at full speed. The scoring will be rough at first, no doubt about it. Even on impressive takes to the rim, you can see why Traoré struggled mightily to finish effectively in France last season…

Traoré shot 6-of-16 from two at Summer League, and just 1-of-7 from three. His catch-and-shoot numbers in France were decent, but his shot is not the prettiest nor quickest, and off-the-dribble shooting will be an adventure for a long time to come.

But trust that there will be flashes…

No matter what, Nolan Traoré will not be an easy player to quit. I also found him to be a positive defender in the extremely small sample size and disjointed environment that is LVSL. Knows what’s going on, uses his plus-wingspan to effect, makes rotations, all that stuff. Maybe that’ll be a calling card for him in the NBA.

Danny Wolf

I didn’t realize just how big he was. Legit 6’11” with a 7’2” wingspan and 250 pounds is ginormous, especially for the role he played at Michigan. So yes, sometimes he looked really slow and ground-bound in Vegas — some of his turnovers early on had him looking like a JV player scrimmaging against the varsity squad.

But Wolf is huge and generally knows where to be. In person, I thought he played poorly against the Washington Wizards in game #2, but then you look at the box-score and he has three steals and four blocks. Huh.

To survive in the NBA, he’ll really need to get in great shape, stamina-wise. Wolf will likely be asked to play on the perimeter some, as well as moonlight as the only big on the court, but plays like these give you hope that there is a solid foundation to build off…

Offensively, he’ll either make jumpers or he won’t, and that’ll determine much of his NBA career. Not much to glean from Summer League. But plays like this help you see the vision as a screener than could pop to three, hit the short roll, or try to get all the way to the rim while balancing aggression and vision…

There will be moments where Wolf looks absolutely terrible in his rookie season. That’s just how it goes, but especially for a player who is not the most impressive athlete, and will have to take some offensive risks to become a productive NBA player. At 21 years old, you hope he produces more than just those moments this season, and hopefully, some clips like the above.

Ben Saraf

“We’re not too worried about the shooting here (Summer League). Both guys just finished up their seasons overseas. They were both pretty wiped out.”

That’s what a Nets front office executive told Keith Smith about Traoré and Ben Saraf, and for any Nets fans wanting to maximize optimism, they should re-read that sentence. Because their jumpers looked rough in Vegas…

Saraf, though, did show flashes. He is a legit 6’7” and has the tightest handle of any guard the Nets drafted in June. It’s not explosive or super shifty, but it’s…professional. He seems to have a real talent for sensing a defender’s momentum, and he absolutely loves the spin move into the lane…

I really like that drive, where he spins off Tyler Kolek with physicality, then immediately decelerates to draw the foul on the help defender. Physical and aware. Physical and aware. That’s the Saraf sell, to me.

But he was largely a rough watch in Summer League. He shot 30.4% from the floor, including going 0-of-4 from three, and posted 11 assists to 8 turnovers. I feel like no matter which way his career goes, we’ll be able to look back at this July and see the signs.

If Saraf turns into an NBA-caliber pint guard, the strong drives at his size will feel like on obvious predictor of what was to come. If he doesn’t, all the bricks and lack of explosion on his drives will look like obvious pitfalls.

Other Notes

• I really want to like Grant Nelson. But he’s 23 years old, was quite reluctant to take catch-and-shoot threes, and poor positioning on defense negated most of his athletic gifts at Las Vegas Summer League. That being said, he has real driving skills, can jump off one or two feet, can pass a little, and has a very non-NBA mustache. He seems like a strong candidate to snag the open two-way contract.
• His competition is Tyrese Samuel; the biggest knock there is that he’s 25 years old. But Samuel played well in sporadic Summer League minutes; he was a physical force in the paint, blocking shots, grabbing boards, and finishing plays. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a camp invite and a season with the Long Island Nets, if he so desires.
• I like Tosan Evbuomwan very much. I never want to see him take more than three dribbles in a row again.