The Brooklyn Nets were one of the more active teams in the NBA this offseason as they are looking to tweak their roster while planning for the future. Brooklyn is still in the early stages of its rebuild so the team isn’t necessarily looking to make it to the playoffs next season, but the view of the team from pundits suggests that next season could be a tough one.
John Schuhmann recently published his power rankings for every team in the Eastern Conference and in his list, he had the Nets ranked as the worst team in the conference following their offseason moves. The most notable moves that Brooklyn made was selecting five players in the 2025 NBA Draft and trading Cam Johnson to the Denver Nuggets for forward Michael Porter Jr. and a 2032 first-round pick.
One of the more interesting parts about the Nets’ performance during the 2024-25 season is that they finished with a 26-56 record despite beginning the campaign with a 9-10 record, putting them on pace to finish slightly below 40 wins on the season. Given that Brooklyn was hoping to get a high draft pick in the 2025 Draft, they eventually traded Dennis Schroder to the Golden State Warriors to start what would eventually be a harder push to the rebuild.
Whether or not the Nets are hoping to improve on their record from the 2024-25 campaign, they are still hoping to improve on both sides of the floor, especially when it comes to efficiency on the offensive end. “They took 24% of their shots, the league’s highest rate, in the last six seconds of the shot clock, according to Second Spectrum tracking. Their effective field goal percentage of 44.2% in the last six seconds ranked 25th,” Schuhmann noted.
As it stands, the Nets will be heading into next season with Nic Claxton at center, Porter at one of the forward spots, Egor Demin at point guard, and presumably Cam Thomas at the shooting guard spot. Brooklyn will be hoping that their rookies and young players make strides over the course of what could be another rough season from a wins and losses perspective.
“Over the last 20 years, the 2014-15 Sixers had the highest percentage of their minutes (37%) that went to rookies, and only one of their nine rookies was a first-round pick. The Nets could certainly challenge that mark and maximize their odds for a higher selection than they got this year,” Schuhmann wrote.