The Nets are going to be awful in 2026. They might be fun, but if Brooklyn doesn't finish the upcoming season in the basement of the East, it could be a sign of the end times.
All fifty Nets fans (me included) are prepared for, and used to, the darkness that lies at the bottom of the NBA standings. When Devin Harris (he was still awesome, you shut up) is the leader of your team for any sizable sample size, you're used to coping with mediocrity.
But still, no one, not even forty-seven Nets fans, could have been initially pleased with the way the team handled the 2025 Draft. Sean Marks & Co. held an unprecedented five first round picks, and just sat on them? Where was the push? The fight? Where was Giannis!? Surely any team in the NBA would have been willing to jump on those picks, even if the Nets decided to package them to trade up to get Ace Bailey ahead of the Jazz (sure Ace, we all believe you really want to start your career in Utah).
And not just that, the Nets pulled the wildest pick of the draft second to only Portland taking Yang Hansen. Egor Demin was just the start of the Nets' weird new Fab 5 of question marked rookie class. None of them are projected as shooters, and scouts even questioned the validity of any of them as starters on a contender. The best review that most coverage can give of their new additions is to note that so many projects give Brooklyn a good shot to land a second consecutive mid-to-high lottery slot. Good grief.
Throw in the quickly deteriorating relationship Brooklyn is having with its star player, Michael Porter, Jr. starting to go seemingly insane online, and the fact that their most exciting player coming out of Summer League is Drew Timme (seriously though, Drew Timme to the ****ing moon), and the Nets seem doomed to finish spend the back half of the 2020s as a paper bag-over-the-face team.
But Brooklyn is simply doing what they've always done
A disclaimer: I might be going crazy and rationalizing an absolutely bonkers move in order to save my sanity -- just like the other thirty-five Nets fans out there. But these Nets aren't really doing anything new. And if they commit to the bit this time, there is a legitimate future in their...well, future.
Beginning with the elephant in the room: their draft was weird, and its haul truly might help land them a top 10 pick for the next one as well. But you cannot say that the Nets didn't have a vision when draft night came along. Jordi Fernandez is going to be their coach for the foreseeable future, evidenced by the fact that he clearly had his fingerprints all over their 2025 rookie class. Fernandez cut his teeth on the staff of several Spanish basketball clubs, and coached all across Europe before making his way to the NBA.
And at his heart, the man is a teacher and a bastion of player development. Knowing this provides valuable context as to why the Nets felt confident in drafting a large number of incredibly weird projects. And as strange, off-kilter, and overlapping as they are skill set-wise, there might not be a coach in the NBA with a stronger developmental resume than Jordi Fernandez, especially for prospects that fit a faster, less iso-centric play style.
As for whoever wanted Brooklyn to trade their picks for a superstar, you must not have paid much attention to how Sean Marks' front office operates. While a big name could help jersey sales and the win column, few are as familiar with the adverse effect that diva superstars can have on their teams as Marks.
Giannis was the best player that was even hinted at getting dangled going into the 2025 offseason, and he alone, or with Cam Thomas and/or Nic Claxton, could not eclipse the Nets' title hopes during the Scary Hours era. And if I were a betting man, I would put the house on Marks & Co. artificially speeding up their rebuild by taking on KD, Kyrie, and Harden. Fast forward to now, and the Nets only got one round further with their rented Big Three than they did with D'Angelo Russell as their captain, and it cost them a future homegrown Coach of the Year and All-Star. So no, Brooklyn was never going to bet the farm again on a rented rebuild fresh off the heels of a failed one.
Yes, this rebuilding process will be painful. It is nearly guaranteed that one of Egor Demin, Nolan Traore, Ben Saraf, Danny Wolf, and Drake Powell will fail to deliver on the promise that got them drafted. But as stunted as Brooklyn's last rebuild was, the 2019 Nets were still chemistry and aura personified -- and that was before KD and Kyrie came by to wreck shop! This is Brooklyn's chance at a do-over, and no matter what you say about them, the Nets' rebuild is committed and has a direction in mind. Things are better than all twenty-two Nets fans would even dare to think.
And if nothing else works...Drew Timme is awesome.