BREAKOUT: Egor Demin EXPLODES for 23 points in 2nd half of Brooklyn Nets’ NEAR comeback vs. 76ers

BREAKOUT: Egor Demin EXPLODES for 23 points in 2nd half of Brooklyn Nets’ NEAR comeback vs. 76ers

On today’s show, Jay Gordman explodes for 23 points during the second half in the Nets loss to the 76ers. Also, Danny Wolf plays the first extended minutes of his NBA career. I’ll offer my top takeaways from both rookies performances right now. [Music] You are Locked on Nets, your daily Brooklyn Nets podcast, part of the Locked On Network. your team every day. Welcome in to Locked on Nets right here on the Locked On Podcast Network. Now the number one sports podcast network. It’s your team, the Brooklyn Nets every single day. I’m Eric Slater, Brooklyn Nets beat reporter for clutchpoints.com. Thank you for making me your first listen of the day. This show is 100% free on all those great platforms. And on today’s show, we got bonus lockdown Nets. It is late Friday night going into Saturday morning. Don’t normally do a show, but I had to tonight because Nets fans have been clamoring for the rookies. Like we all know what the season is about. Draft position, rookie development, all that. And with that, fans have been clamoring more rookie minutes. They wanted it. We haven’t quite gotten there yet, but they got their heaviest dose of the season during Friday’s loss to the 76ers at Barclay Center. Jagoran plays 30 minutes. Drake Pal gets minutes. And then Danny Wolf makes his f his real NBA debut, plays the first extended meaningful minutes of his NBA career. So I’m going to get into all that, but I got to focus on Jory, who turns in his strangest and arguably most impressive game of the season in this one. Jaor finishes with 23 points, which is season high. But this was such a strange performance because Jaor really looked terrible at the start of this game. He was pretty out of sync. He didn’t look confident. He was scoreless on 0 of three shooting in the first half with two assists and two turnovers. He was losing the ball around half court. He didn’t look like he was looking for his own shot. And it looked like all right, like this is just a game that Jaor doesn’t have it. I tweeted it out in the first half like really rough start for Jagor. He doesn’t look confident and it is what it is. And then in the second half he must have gotten a pep talk at halftime. He flipped some kind of a switch. I don’t know what went into it. The Nets were down. Maybe desperation plays in a role in it. Then he comes out in the second half and he looks like like Luca Donuch or Steph Curry for stretches of the second half and legitimately looked like the best player on the floor in the second half of this game in a game that featured guys like Tyrese Maxi, Quinton Grimes, some really high level players. Paul George Jagger in the second half of this one. Scores all 23 of his points season high in the second half. So, 23 points, eight rebounds, three assists, one turnover, one steal, two blocks, eight of 15 from the field, and five of 12 from three in the second half. And I’m going to get into like this specifically, you know, what I liked about what he did on the court during that second half. But I want to start it because I think that this performance is just it’s it signifies some issues and then some really encouraging strengths of Jaguar. Start with the strengths, which is the confidence, mental toughness, mental fortitude, all those things that people call cliches, but there is importance and significance in them. And I think that you see that in a game like this, a game, like I said, Jagger looked terrible in the first half. He did not look confident whatsoever. And his ability to shake that off, come out in the second half, and really almost will this Nets team back to a comeback. I mean, the Nets end up falling. I didn’t even give you the score because I’m so focused on the rookie performances. But the Nets fall 115 103. But they fell behind by 20 plus points in this one and they cut it to single digits late in the game and that was really all Jagor just willing them back. But that mental toughness to be able to shake off a first half performance like he had, stay confident and come out and do the things that he did in the second half. I think that says a lot about him as a player, as a person, as you know, a young man, teenager, whatever you want to call him. He’s 19 years old. The ability to do that is really encouraging because in the NBA, in any pro sport, you got to have a short memory. I mean, like that’s just that’s in the job description. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to excel. You’re going to go into long slumps. You’re going to have struggles with confidence. And Jaor seems like a player, like we knew coming into the draft, he seemed like a guy who really had it between the ears, and that was a big part of what attracted the Nets to him during the pre-draft process. But I think you see it in a game like this. really good attitude, really confident, and his ability and mental toughness to be able to shake off some of those early struggles, it really stuck out. And just talking about, you know, what Jagor did on the court in that second half, he was just so much more assertive, so much more confident, looking for his own shot, putting pressure on the defense. And the confidence as a shooter just really sticks out in that one because Jagger is a guy that he does not care how many shots he misses. He’s going to keep firing them up. Sometimes bad looks. He took some bad ones in this one and he said after the game that I’d like to have a few of those back, but I would rather have a guy who’s, you know, struggling in the first half of a game, comes out and is willing to take some bad shots and just keep firing. You know, forcing it isn’t great, but the ability or the confidence and the willingness to take shots and not be worried about missing. That is a breath of fresh air, especially for a Nets fan base that saw, you know, their highest paid player be Ben Simmons in the last three seasons. to see a guy that’ll come in and will put the ball up and not worry about missing no matter how much he’s struggling. That’s really impressive. I said, you know, Jagger was scoreless on 0 of three shooting in the first half. He took 15 shots in the second half. Was seven of 15. Most of them three-pointers. But the commonness as a three-point shooter, you know, as I said, for any three-point shooter, confidence is going to be huge. And Jagor is confident and he looks like a legitimate three-point shooter. I mean, in this one, he finishes, what was he? Jagger finishes five of 14 from three, five of 12 in the second half. So that’s like not a great number, but a lot of the misses look good and I would say that overall I think it’s pretty clear through this is what 14 game or 17 or 18 games that Jagor has played, he looks like a high level shooter. Like he’s at 35% from three on nearly nine attempts per 36 minutes at this point. And for a rookie and for a guy who shot 27% last year, that’s really good. And a lot I said a lot of the misses look good and they did in this one. and the level of shooter that he is, you can see clearly that that’s showing up on the scouting report. I mean, opposing guys, opposing defenders are closing out to Jaor hard. I mean, how many pump fake sideep threes have we seen from Jagger thus far? I’ve seen, you know, more than a handful, you know, in these first games just because defenders are closing out really hard to him. And he’s showing a really good understanding of when to get those defenders up in the air. And then he usually resets and takes another three-point shot. Now, the next step is going to be turning those into drives. when you pump fake, you see an opening, not always settling for the three, sometimes getting downhill, creating for yourself in the lane or creating for others when you see fit. So, that’s kind of the next step. But the fact that defenders are closing out this hard to him, the fact that that is clearly on the scouting report, the fact that he is this confidence confident, all of that is a resounding positive. And on top of the three-point shooting, Jagor was three of four on twos in the second half. So, you know, we saw some really aggressive takes to the basket in the second half. I mean, four, you know, three driving layups. Like, we saw that in the first half of that Boston game. He had some really good drives in the first half there, but other than that, this was probably Jagor’s most aggressive half of the season going to the basket and we saw, you know, the 76ers defense was really selling out to try to stop Jagor down the stretch of this game. And that was pretty apparent. I mean, they were putting two on the ball a lot. We were seeing, you know, we saw a transition drive from Jagor. We saw another one where he was kind of getting like a DHO on the left wing and they put two defenders on him because they were so worried about him pulling up from three cuz he had just hit a few and he kind of spun to his left baseline off of the double team. Went down, went to the basket, scored like on a a double pump layup at the rim. So that’s just really encouraging stuff. All of that the three-point shooting, the willingness to get downhill in the second half. I think we’re going to want to see a little bit more of a balance between those two things. But the confidence, it was all on full display. And it wasn’t even just the offense. I mean, I said in in the second half of this game, I mean, Jagor had eight rebounds in the second half of this one, so he was rebounding. The defense was really shaky out of the gate. I mean, there were some isolation possessions in the first half where Joerger was on an island on Quinton Grimes and Tyrese Maxi and he was, you know, he looked like he was skating and Brian Park and some of these possessions in the first half, but the second half, I thought he really turned it around. I thought he looked a lot more engaged and we’re seeing the length really playing in the second half. I mean, there were some transition defensive possessions, which is something that the Nets have struggled with in a big way. We saw Jaor get a few strips and steals because he can dig down on some of these guys, and his length allows him to, you know, get into some spots where other guys can’t just because he’s this 6’9 guy, 6’10 wingspan, and he can do some of that stuff. I said, you know, in the second half, he had a block and two steals. So, that’s all really positive. I think overall, just the impact that he had in the second half was apparent. He nearly willed this Nets team back to victory. And now the challenge for Jaor is going to be to sustain it because I you know I I talked to Jordan Fernandez about it after the game and we’ve seen it with Jaor like we’ve seen him do it for stretches throughout the season especially in terms of his offensive aggressiveness a lot of you know a lot of that pertaining to him as a driver like we’ve seen stretches where he looks really aggressive driving the ball like in that Boston game and then we see stretches where he looks like he’s just a bystander and he doesn’t want to press the issue he doesn’t want to get downhill he doesn’t want to do some of those things and in this game you saw that and I think you just saw it overall all like I said in the first half, you know, he takes three shots. He’s really a bystander. He’s not doing much. He’s not pressing the issue. And then it takes the Nets getting down and they have a little desperation. You know, they don’t have Michael Porter Jr. They don’t have Cam Thomas. They don’t really have these other guys to look to and Jaggar feels desperate and he flips the switch and in the second half he just completely does a 180 in terms of aggressiveness. And that’s great. And this was overall a major positive for him to have, you know, 238 and three in the second half of a game on over 50% shooting. Like that’s awesome, but we’re going to need to see him sustain it and do it for four quarters. Like the aggressiveness, it can’t come and go. And like that’s part of being a rookie. It’s not that worrisome to me. Like it’s part of, you know, being a 19-year-old playing in the NBA and being a starting point guard. Like that’s going to happen. But you want to see him at least try throughout full stretches of games instead of it being like, I’m going really hard and I feel really comfortable for these, you know, few these these uh 15 minutes in a first half of a game or these 15 minutes in the second half of the game. No, you got to see it. You got to see it the whole game. It might look ugly at some points. You might not always be the most confident, but you need to press the issue. You need to be assertive, especially if you’re going to be a guy who has the ball in his hands this much. So, sustaining it, that’s something that Jordan Fernandez talks about with all of these Nets players, the ability to sustain the effort, the engagement, the focus, all of that. That’s huge for Jagor, and I’m going to want to see an improvement from that moving forward. But overall, in a game where this looked really ugly at the start, it turns out being a resounding positive. and Jaor’s probably his best performance of the season. So, really encouraging stuff from him there. But Danny Wolf, another Nets rookie who Nets fans have been calling for. They want to see the Wolf unleash the Wolf, free the Wolf. I keep hearing all that stuff. And the Nets fans got it, albeit in a small sample size, but Danny plays his first meaningful minutes of his NBA career tonight. What did I see from him? How should fans be looking at him moving forward? I’ll get into all that when I close out this bonus episode of Locked on Nets after a quick break. The NBA is heating up and Door Dash has found the perfect way to keep fans in their bag all season long. Whether you’re watching for the highlights, your fantasy team, or just your favorite player, Door Dash makes every game night even better. Door Dash is the official on demand delivery platform of the NBA. And they’re celebrating with something called the bag drop. Every time an NBA player scores 50 points in a game, Door Dash drops 50% off your order with Dash Pass the next day and you’re automatically entered for a chance to win the ultimate fan bag. We’re talking player inspired drip, exclusive gear, and stuff you’ll actually want. 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Right now, FanDuel is giving new customers $300 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. So, head to FanDuel.com to sign up and play your game with FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Coming back from the break, closing out today’s bonus episode of Locked on Nets, hitting on Brooklyn’s loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday at Barclay Center and focusing on the rookies because that’s what everyone wants to hear about Jorman’s big performance. Hit on all that. And now Danny Wolf plays the first extended minutes. Really, this is effectively Danny’s NBA debut. And he plays 13 minutes in this game. He didn’t come in until midway through the second quarter, but he plays, you know, most of the second half of the second quarter and then played extended minutes in the second half. And he finishes five points, five rebounds, one assists, zero turnovers, 0 of two from the field, but five of six from the free throw line and he was a team best plus six in 13 minutes. So that’s one his minutes overall, which is a really, really resounding positive. And then you look at Danny’s performance and look, nothing like crazy. didn’t make a field goal, but I would say overall that this was a solid debut for Danny Wolf. I feel like he looked solid. He did not look out of place. He did not look overwhelmed, which is impressive for a player who has yet to play significant NBA minutes and has really just been in the G-League and you’re kind of bouncing between, you know, Long Island and Brooklyn. He comes up for this one. And I asked him after the game like, “Did you know that this was the game that you were going to get your first NBA minutes?” And he said no. He said, you know, MPJ was out, so I had an idea that it was a possibility. But MPJ and Don Sharp had been out in prior games and Danny did not get an extended NBA minutes despite being up with Brooklyn. So tonight, he gets it. And he said, you know, it’s a stay ready mindset. You just got to try, you got to try to stay ready and you don’t always know what that entails, but he was trying to do it and he did it and he got in. And he said that like after the game, I asked Danny if he said, I felt like, you know, I was a little like, oh, like wideeyed in the beginning of the game. this is my first real NBA minutes and Trish trying to see how I fit in. Then he said he felt as the second half progressed and as he got deeper into the game, he started to feel more confident. He started to feel like himself and that’s what I think I saw. You really saw it as the game progressed. You started to see little flashes here and there of some of the things that Danny Wolf can do. But overall, like you look at it and there were no glaring mistakes and I think you saw glimpses of some of the strengths that Danny has. I mean, you talk about the offensive ability and what he does. like this is a guy that has that versatility. He can be a legit dribble, pass, shoot threat. We did not see all of that in this game, but you did see flashes of it. Like you see just the way that Danny can see the court and process the court. It’s a little bit different than some of the other guys, especially some of the other big men. Like he makes some passes that other guys don’t see, whether it’s just an extra pass, whether it’s a crosscourt pass off of a drive or off of a post up or some of those things. Also, his transition ball handling. We saw a flash of that where he got a rebound. he’s able to push the ball on the break and run the floor with Drake Pal and he ends up hitting a little shovel pass to Drake Pal and Drake gets to the free throw line. So, you saw some of that stuff and then in the second half you started to try to see you started to see him try to reach into his bag a little bit. Like we saw one one drive where he pump fake, he drove, he tried to go to like an up and under around the rim, he gets fouled, he goes to the free throw line. We saw another drive where he pumped fake on the left wing, he drove down, he spun back to the middle and had like a little finger roll near the front of the rim, but he missed it. But a good move. So you’re seeing some of the flashes. He didn’t end up making a field goal, but he made the right play. Like one turnover in 13 minutes. I thought that was a positive because we’ve seen Danny in some of the games with Long Island struggle. Like he had an eight turnover game down there. I think he’s averaging around like 3.3 assists to 3.5 turnovers. So negative assist to turnover down there. Now given he has the ball in his hands way more than he does in a game like this where he’s playing up with Brooklyn. So it’s going to look different. but he had the ball in his hands a little bit in the second half and he took care of it and he made some good passes and he had some nice takes to the rim that he didn’t ultimately end up converting. But I think that all that was positive. I think you’re seeing, you know, if you watch Danny’s G-League tape, you see that he’s a legitimately a guy who can be a floor spacer. Like he’s taking a lot of threes there. He has the driving ability, which we all know was a major strength of his. Then he also has the ability to run inverted pick and roll and do some of all that stuff. and he didn’t get to do it tonight because he was playing large stretches of this alongside one of the net centers whether Nick Claxton or Don Sharp and Noah Clowney. So Danny was effectively playing the wing for a lot of this game, which you know, I think speaks kind of to how crowded the rotation is. And it’s kind of tough for the Nets to find minutes for Danny Wolf, you know, at the center position or at power forward because they have three guys in this one um in Nick Claxton, Dron Sharp, and Noah Clowny who are all available. But I think it was pretty impressive that, you know, Danny didn’t look overwhelmed. He didn’t look too out of place while pretty much playing the wing for most of this game. like he was playing alongside a center and a power forward which is something that he hasn’t really done throughout his basketball career. I mean, he played alongside a big at Michigan, but playing alongside two bigs hasn’t done that that much. And I think you saw, you know, he said that he, you know, was a little a little less comfortable in the beginning of the game, then he got more comfortable towards the end. He’s finally started to feel like himself. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the beginning of the game, he was playing alongside, you know, Nick Claxton or Dron Sharp and Noah Clowny. And at the end of the game, he was playing alongside just Claxton or Sharp. So, he was playing at the power forward. And I’ve said I think that, you know, Danny, I wouldn’t put him in a box. in terms of being a center or a power forward, but I think that the more you can space the floor around him, the more interesting it’s going to be. And I think that ultimately I think he’s going to be a center. I think there’s questions about how does that work out because, you know, he’s not a rim protector. What does it look like on defense? And I think ultimately he’ll be able to play both, but he’s going to have defensive questions at both spots in terms of is he can he play center for extended stretches because he’s not a rim protector. Can he play power forward or the wing for extended stretches because, you know, is he going to be able to guard on the perimeter? And I think that the defense I actually think looked like a positive in this one. I mean I thought that Danny for the most part like he didn’t do anything that great but he moved well on defense. Like you saw the Nets in this game as the game progressed because they were trying to come back from a big deficit. You saw them trapping the ball at half court and then kind of scram switching and rotating on the back end which is something that they do a lot. And Danny didn’t make any like standout plays but I think that he was able to do that and recover and be in the right spots consistently. And I think that he looked, you know, he looked fairly good. like he looked fairly graceful moving out there defensively and that was has been a struggle in the G- League at points. So, it was only 13 minutes, but the defensive end of the floor, I think it looked good. And the offensive end of the floor, I think you saw some of the flashes. I mean, he got to the line six times. He had some nice passes. He had some nice takes to the rim that he didn’t end up converting. But ultimately for a player who has yet to play extended NBA minutes, just getting thrown into it in this one and playing a role that he really hasn’t played before, him looking comfortable and him looking like, you know, not out of place for making any glaring mistakes and having an impact on the game. I mean, I said he was a team best plus six. So, the Nets won his minutes more than any other player on the team. I think all of that is a resounding positive and it’s going to be interesting to see how the Nets navigate this with him moving forward because as I said they have a crowded front court rotation like they have Nick Claxton, Dron Sharp, Noah Clowny, Michael Porter Jr. and if MPJ is in this game you really don’t even know like where Danny’s minutes are coming from. So Danny’s a guy who I’ve said the Nets are going to want to play him in the G-League. Kind of mine some data about whether he’s a power forward or a center. Get him comfortable down there, all of that stuff. But he’s 21 years old. He’s not 19 like Jaor Joe or any of these other uh Nets rookie first round picks. The clock is accelerating. And I said like Noah Clown he played in the G-League his whole rookie season. He was kind of that tweener between a center and a power forward. And the Nets used that whole season almost to determine what he was going to be, you know, in the G-League by playing him mostly at center saying, “Okay, he’s not a center.” But with Danny, you know, Noah was 19 when he was doing that. Danny’s 21. So the clock is, you know, pushed forward and expedited a little bit with him. So I think you’re going to want to see Danny getting NBA minutes up with the Nets, you know, sooner rather than later. And I think he’s going to go back to the G-League. But how do the Nets manage that as we get towards the trade deadline? I mean, you have guys in Nick Claxton in um Dron Sharp who can be tradable, are going to be trade candidates. Does that does Danny Wolf factor into that conversation? How do they free minutes up for him? you know, that will be a main story line to monitor as the year progresses. But he’s a guy who I think should be getting NBA minutes sooner rather than later, at least in the second half of the year. And I think once he gets up here and once you have him playing consistently, I think you’re going to see some really exciting stuff from him because he is probably the most exciting draft pick that the Nets made in terms of some of the NBA ready skills that he has in the ball handling, the passing, some of that stuff relative to some of these other guys who are two years younger than him. So, I’m excited to see how the Nets handle that. And I think fans are going to be clamoring for some more Wolf minutes as we move forward. But it was nice to see him get on the floor tonight. That’s all I got for you guys on this bonus episode of Locked on Nets. If you guys do not already, make sure to subscribe to Locked on Nets on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast, whether Apple Podcast or Spotify. If you enjoy the content, take a second right now, smash that like button, leave a comment, leave a fivestar review. Anything you can do to engage is much appreciated. But the Nets are back in Milwaukee on Saturday night and then they’re coming back to Barlay Center on Monday. So, I’ll have coverage of all that and more when I’m back on Monday talking more Brooklyn Nets basketball.

Erik Slater reacts to Egor Demin’s 23-point performance during the second half of the Brooklyn Nets’ loss to the Philadelphia 76ers. He also analyzes the first extended minutes of Danny Wolf’s NBA career.

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