The Brooklyn Nets made one of the more controversial choices in the 2025 NBA Draft when they selected BYU guard Egor Demin with the eighth overall pick. Heading into the draft, Brooklyn was linked to players like guard Jeremiah Fears and forward Noa Essengue, but they reached for Demin, according to most draft experts. Was choosing Demin the right choice?
“The Brooklyn Nets should be thrilled if Jeremiah Fears fell to them. Despite the shooting concerns, he has the most star potential of any player remaining on this list, even more so than Egor Demin, their real-life pick,” Greg Swartz wrote for Bleacher Report when doing the re-draft of the 2025 class. For those in need of a refresher, Fears went to the New Orleans Pelicans with the No. 7 pick, but there were rumors that the Nets could have traded up for Fears.
“Brooklyn is very much in the “best talent available” stage of its rebuild, as even Cam Thomas isn’t under contract past this year,” Swartz continued. “With three more first-round picks to go, snagging Fears at No. 8 overall would have been a heck of a start for the Nets.”
For more context, the reason that Fears is available to be taken by the Nets with the No. 8 pick in this re-draft is due to the fact that the Pelicans would take Michigan State guard Jase Richardson instead of Fears. If that’s what ended up happening during the draft, there is a possibility that general manager Sean Marks would have taken Fears given that some mock drafts had Fears going to the Nets in the first place.
While many around the NBA feel that Demin was taken too early, he has been a pleasant surprise since he was drafted by Brooklyn and he is coming off a 14-point, five-rebound performance in his NBA regular season debut. By comparison, Fears put up 17 points and two assists while shooting 70.0% from the field in his debut so it seems like there is a case to be made for both players to have been taken by the Nets.