The Brooklyn Nets went into the 2025 NBA Draft with an interesting strategy as they found a way to get five first-round picks and use all of them in the same class. Brooklyn seems to be sold on rebuilding the franchise through the Draft and understandably so, but the Nets‘ content team showed what the conversations were like behind the scenes.
“One of our slogans is disagree and commit. That’s front and center in our war room. The meaning behind that is that it’s healthy to disagree,” general manager Sean Marks said during the fourth episode of the team’s SCOUT series. The web series has been giving Nets fans a behind-the-scenes look into how Brooklyn’s scouting department prepared for the 2025 NBA Draft, including the debates.
“It’s healthy to debate. If there’s no debate and there’s no disagreement, then I think something must be wrong,” Marks continued. “We’ve all seen players in different life cycles at different points in their careers and so forth. So, we should be asking ourselves questions of who he reminds me of and, what would I question about that person?”
One of the themes that followed the Nets after the conclusion of the 2025 Draft was whether Brooklyn overthought its picks too much or didn’t do enough the opportunity they had with multiple first-round picks. The Nets taking guard Egor Demin with the eighth overall pick in the Draft appeared to surprise many people covering the draft, but this episode attempts to explain the thought process behind Brooklyn selecting Demin as high as they did.
“You want to see if guys are fighters, if they care about winning as a team, competing as a team, like not just to win a game, but give yourself a chance,” Nets head coach Jordi Fernandez said when explaining the general mindset of the team. “That’s what competitive is, especially in this world. So, you know, we can see that in players and try to figure it out in different ways.”