It’s easy to doubt the Brooklyn Nets right now. This is true if you, like me, live and die with this team. The start of this rebuild was an odd 2025 NBA Draft that’s been dissed by both national pundits who cover the whole league at a surface level and scouting enthusiasts for whom the whole year is #DraftSZN. Everybody is wrong all the time, and we should be excited for the Flatbush 5, as they are yet to step foot on an NBA floor. Still, on that night, I could only feel disappointment.
Those who couldn’t care less about the Nets (or basketball, really), dying to repurpose low-hanging, engagement-baiting fruit as “original content,” can also turn their nose up at this team. Brooklyn’s most popular offseason addition spent the summer churning out embarrassing quotes. After Media Day, the most popular refrain about the Nets was just how aura-less their five first-round picks. Maybe a valid sentiment, maybe not … either way, the jokes are already six feet deep…
Good one, online sportsbook!
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Meanwhile, inside HSS Training Center, the 2025-26 Brooklyn Nets are off to a steady start. Through three days of training camp, every player has chuckled about the cardiovascular intensity of a Jordi Fernández-led training camp, just as they did last year.
“I’m glad I was in shape when I came. If I wasn’t in shape, I’d be in trouble,” laughed Kobe Bufkin.
All the buzzwords are buzzing: physicality, ball-pressure, communication. Only time will tell if they are actual tenets of this year’s Brooklyn Nets team. Last year, Fernández did implement an aggressive defense that, for long stretches, caused turnovers and havoc last season; should would we expect anything different now?
“A lot of teams want to do it but a lot don’t practice it,” said Bufkin. “We have specific drills and things that we actually do, and it’s constantly talked about, that we want to do it. A lot of people do press conferences about it, but they don’t really preach about it. Our coaching staff preaches about that.”
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Of course, this type of training camp analysis won’t garner much attention. Nor will Day’Ron Sharpe living up to his stated offseason goal of working on his body; he looks noticeably trimmer in camp…
Don’t fret. When asked if the suddenly slim Day’Ron was still the strongest guy on the court, Noah Clowney could only smirk. Speaking of Noah, he too looks like a changed man. At Media Day, his coach mentioned that the 21-year-old now looks like a “grown man,” after an offseason spent eating and lifting weights; he sure does. His shoulders, arms, and chest are obviously bigger this season, noticeable even to the casual observer. It seems Noah isn’t quite yet sick of the compliments…
We all know why Clowney packed on the muscle: “Being a better driver, I have to get stronger, I have to be able to drive through contact and be able to still be able to explode.”
This season, Clowney shot just 58% at the rim, per Cleaning the Glass. Among players listed at 6’9” or taller (min. 10 attempts), only a handful of very green or very gray dudes did worse than that: Matas Buzelis, Taj Gibson, Kevin Love, and Quinten Post … Expand the query to any shot inside the free-throw line, and Clowney shot just 41% in total.
I wrote that at the end of last season, and while Clowney’s 3-point percentage will always draw the eyes first, it’s tough to imagine him being a positive offensive player if he can’t make anything shake inside the paint. The third-year pro, though, has been lauded as a ‘sponge’ since the day he arrived in Brooklyn. And in typical Clowney fashion, he’s spoken about his strengths and weakness with great clarity so far in training camp.
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When asked about what he wants his offensive decision-making to look like this year, he kept it simple: “I think in transition it will be downhill. It’s easy because everyone is not loaded and it’s the easiest way you can get there and just being able to play off two [feet]. I don’t know what’s behind me. If somebody’s trailing, pull-behinds are usually open playing off two. I did a lot of bump euros off of one. You know, you got a [seven-]footer in front, and you have to make a decision and not turn it over.”
Noah was a poor driver last season, but every so often, you saw flashes. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to play the game…
…just that his body hasn’t caught up to his mind.
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At Friday’s practice, Jordi Fernández said he is “excited to watch [Clowney] play real games. And obviously, you’ve got to go through training camp and the preseason games, but he’s done a great job. His ability to shoot, his size and getting better at playing off two feet in the paint, limiting turnovers and fishing better at the rim.”
Then, I followed up with a question about getting young player to slow down in the lane, to get to two feet: “If you think about it, a lot of our players have been, you know, top athletes all their lives. And when they get to this level, a lot of them, they just think they’re gonna go to the rim, jump and finish, and a lot of times, they’ve never had to figure it out that way. Challenging centers in the best league in the world is not necessarily a good thing, and learning how to do it … a lot of times, the best finishers are guys that have never been that gifted early on in their careers, and they had to find a way to play off two, to be a better decision-maker, and finish when you have the advantage. So I think it’s part of the process. As coaches, we need to figure it out. So it’s a good challenge for us. Our players are buying into it, and we want to be a better fishing team, because last year we were a poor finishing team.”
If there’s one complaint, albeit an inconsequential, to have for this Nets team through three days of training, it’s that it’s been tough to find a good quote. But there was a detailed, insightful answer to cap the week. And not just because it gets into the nitty-gritty of NBA skill development, but because it may reveal something about the head coach and this Nets culture.
It’d be easy to chalk the Brooklyn Nets being a poor finishing team in 2024-25 up to the personnel: They didn’t have good finishers. Isn’t the only way to fix that to acquire better ones? Well, that’s not Jordi Fernández’s M.O., and it extends past rookies and young players, though in Clowney’s case, he is just 21 years old in his third year. Natural improvement is to be expected.
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But Fernández would say this about every player on the roster. When he talks about Michael Porter Jr. or Nic Claxton having a career year, you believe it’s sincere. He doesn’t view these veterans as finished products, not just in the way he’ll use them, but even in their own personal skill development. Getting “one percent better each day” may be a cliché in Brooklyn by now, but that doesn’t mean it’s hollow.
“Jordi does a great job of making us work but also keeping us levelheaded,” says Clowney. “You still need to enjoy your job. You’re going to come in and you’re going to work, but like, we’re going to have some sections here when we’re going to have some fun. So, people are happy to come into the gym.”
There’s never as much real insight to take away from training camp media availability as the hype around the start of the NBA season would suggest. Rookies Drake Powell and Egor Dëmin working back from injuries, Ben Saraf is impressing folks (we’ll have more on that soon), and of course, there are some #WeightRoom sightings.
So much is riding on the rookies. Their early play, in many minds, will determine if the Brooklyn Nets rebuild is off to a nice start or if it’s a disaster waiting to happen at launch. But there just might be a budding culture, Noah Clowney just might be improving, players just might believe in the coaching staff in Brooklyn.
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We can only learn all this during the regular season, still nearly a month away. Even after one rebuilding season, after plenty of aspersions cast from the outside, this era of Brooklyn Nets basketball has barely begun. And there is life inside HSS.