Brooklyn Nets guard Egor Demin had plenty of people watching how he would handle his first taste of NBA action in the Las Vegas Summer League that happened last month. After being selected by Brooklyn with the eighth overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, Demin showed in Las Vegas that he could have a future as an off-ball contributor, something that the coaching staff liked to see from him.
“Yeah, his role here (Summer League) was WAY different than what we’re going to ask him to do in the regular season,” a Nets coach said of Demin’s role in the summer league, according to Spotrac’s Keith Smith. Demin, who came into the Draft as the best passer in the class, did not spend nearly as much time with the ball in his hands as he did during his one season at BYU, but that was by design.
“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,” the Nets coach continued. “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. We couldn’t be happier with his work here (Summer League).
Demin, 19, finished the 2024-25 college basketball season with a 24.9% usage rate as he was clearly the point guard for the Cougars and was making all of the decisions for the team. After playing three games for the Nets in the summer league, Demin finished with a 19.4% usage rate as he had to share the ball-handling responsibilities with players like fellow rookies Nolan Traore and Ben Saraf, among others.
As the Nets coach alluded to, Demin played more of an off-ball role than he has at any point over the past few seasons and the results were encouraging for what his future could be in the NBA. Demin not only shot 43.5% from three-point land, but he shot that well 7.7 three-point attempts per game, showing that the concern over his jumpshot may have been a bit overblown based on the early results.