Brooklyn’s Future Starts Now: 2025 Draft Preview

Brooklyn’s Future Starts Now: 2025 Draft Preview

off season is about to get started for the Brooklyn Nets draft is coming up free agency is right around the corner so got to talk to my guy who covers the Nets for the New York Post Brian Lewis brian how you doing sir all right how you doing man i’m good i feel like for you you haven’t had any games to cover in a while in terms of basketball with the Nets so you’ve been in offseason mode for quite some time and this is an interesting offseason for the the Nets and I want to start with the draft with you right because they’ve got the eighth pick they’ve got four picks in the first round they have five picks in the top 36 right what’s the net strategy going into this draft is it keep all the picks is it try to use some to move up trade for a player what What do you think the strategy is going to be going here okay now you know I’m far too stingy to actually bet my money so I’m not telling anybody to wager don’t Don’t do that but my supposition is that you’ll see them consolidate some of these picks listen five picks in the top 36 that’s That’s a lot just for logistic reasons you can’t It’s hard for them to actually develop five children at the same time you just can’t you can’t do it right you can’t give them your undivided attention and put enough into them to develop them um so barring some weird perfect storm where I don’t know you’re drafting a 23 year old 36 and have two guys that you can stash at 26 and 27 barring something weird like that I would expect considering they only have one first round pick next year and next year’s draft is supposed to be every bit as deep as this year’s draft i would think that they will probably look to consolidate either punt a pick into next year or at some point the future 27 whatever or uh combine picks and move up in the draft now moving up is a vagory that can that can include a lot of things whether that’s moving up because they were kind of disappointed with where they landed in the lottery they went in with the six seed and ended up eighth right so that can be moving up in the lottery or uh which I personally think maybe even more likely is combining picks in the bottom of the first round and whether you combine picks or combine a pick and a player moving up and trying to get a second lottery pick uh that I could definitely see okay what I’m stunned at though is the thought of them actually making all five of these picks and trying to roster five rookies that seems very unlikely as as you mentioned that you especially in today’s NBA where you’re trying to maneuver the cap and you know that’s hard to do you can’t develop all those guys plus remember uh Noah Clown is still I think 20 right still young dariq Whitehead is like 20 and he needs development because he basically lost a year so I I don’t think you can develop five rookies and two other guys that are essentially the age of rookies yeah that’s that’s really tough now I think fans will also hear this and say “Okay they’ve got the five picks in the top 36 the four in the first round uh we could use some of that to maybe trade for a star and the star’s name that’s been out there and sort of rumored around the nets is Giannis Anten Koopo now we don’t know what Giannis wants to do we don’t know if he still wants to stay in Milwaukee we don’t know if he has interest in coming to Brooklyn none of that is known yet but do you think the Nets would think about maybe packaging some of the picks whether it’s some combination of the ones this year or some that they have down the road coming from the Knicks that they’d want to use that and try to move for a star like Giannis okay there’s a lot to unpack there there’s a lot so I’ll try to do this briefly okay when you say a star like Giannis there aren’t stars like Giannis that that I have to actually acknowledge there is no star he’s a top three player in the world we’re talking about right there’s a lot of guys that are getting paid right so let me let me let’s notice let’s rephrase that with the unpacking okay if you can get go for a superstar yeah i I and I’m not going to say like Giannis because there’s only few in his Well that’s what I’m saying but then even if you want to say below that if you want to try to even package that for a star player is any of that superstar star is any of that in the net space i do not think they have any interest i think you you gave up a lot of equity to go back and get not only your 25 natural pick yep but also their 26 natural pick you do that because you are frankly tanking to get two lottery picks that you’re going to build around right now i think there’s one guy out there reasonably speaking right that was going to be able to convince them to move off of their tank and accelerate their process that one guy was Giannis right all right giannis I can tell you Giannis likes it in New York he comes here frequently he visits he has business ventures that he owns in New York and he does business with other people in New York however that being said I would never presume to tell you what is in his head what I would say is this people that have a good grasp of the situation have told me they do not expect him to basically take a flamethrower to the Bucks to get out that’s just not in his character that’s not his way he’s not going to make it stink and act a fool to get out of Milwaukee and they don’t have any interest in trading him so at this juncture if he’s not going to force his way out and they’re not going to willingly trade him people around the league went from in the immediate aftermath of the season basically expecting him to leave yes to now viewing him as somebody that is off the table so I would not expect him to be in Brooklyn if he goes elsewhere fine maybe but I don’t expect him to be in Brooklyn and I frankly don’t expect him to be anywhere other than Milwaukee and there is no other player whether other players move whether Trey gets moved or Ball gets moved or Sabonis gets moved or whatever I don’t expect the Nets to move off of their tank for any of those players i fully expect another season next year of tanking playing these various rookies that they’re going to draft and then you come up next summer summer of 26 having these guys with a year of experience having another lottery pick and having cap room because I fully expect them to punt some of their cap room into next summer into next summer and as we get to this summer and I think I’ll wrap with this is do you expect the Nets to be active in free agency because the plan is as you said I know they don’t want to use the T-word but continue tanking there’s a likelihood that next season looks a lot like this past season that we saw it could look worse if you’re playing a bunch of rookies right it could be worse you’re playing a bunch of rookies we saw this season and you and I talked about this in many videos how good of a coach Jordy Fernandez is i think the Nets feel like they found their coach with Jordy Fernandez but free agency what kind of players do you think they might try to get to come to Brooklyn will they be active players in free agency at all or is it you know finding some veterans that’ll take the minimum or maybe want to mentor some guys what What do you think they can do this summer how active they would be again or not be yes yeah again I don’t want to be too draconian about this but I do expect him to be active okay i don’t expect him to be active in free agency i think their cap listen certainly I’m not speaking for Shawn Marks he can do whatever he’s going to do and he he’s pretty quiet he likes to work in stealth mode and there are free agents out there that they could sign it’s not a great free agent class but there are a number of restricted free agents of course they could take a shot on Jonathan Kaminga i don’t think it’s happening they could take a shot on Josh Giddy i don’t think it’s happening i don’t think their plan is to go make offer sheets to restricted free agents i think the plan with their cap room and they should have $50 million in cap room is to use that cap room in trades whether they are taking a salary dump outright say Boston who’s facing the possibility of a of paying $500 million in salary whether Boston needs to get off of Kristoff’s Porzingis and the Nets say “Well I’ll take a $30 million expiring contract into my cap space but you’re going to have to make it worth my while to do it first round pick or what have you right?” or facilitating trades being that third team in a trade right so if Phoenix is trading Kevin Durant I am in no way telling Net fans that I think Kevin Durant is coming back but that doesn’t mean the Nets aren’t involved in a Kevin Durant trade right they could certainly be a third team to facilitate a Kevin Durant trade to team X all right there are a lot of trades that are going to come down either on draft night or shortly thereafter it’s going to be really really busy at least that’s what people around the league have been saying ever since the combine so the Nets are the only team with legitimate cap space so they can facilitate this trade facilitate that trade that’s where I think their cap room is going to go maybe you end up trading one of your veteran players whether that’s Cam Johnson Nick Claxton or whatever they can use cap space to take back a bad contract and get picks in those trades maybe you package CAM with one of your lower picks and move up into a lottery spot that’s a possibility so I think the cap space is going to be weaponized it’s not something that’s going to be used directly to go out and take free agents but it will be weaponized to get assets and more picks or possibly like a young controllable guy on his rookie contract right so the Nets could be very active this off seasonason just might not be the way you think in terms of signing for agents but they could use a cap space as Brian just mentioned we will see what the Nets are able to do this off season that is Brian Lewis the great Beat reporter covering the Brooklyn Nets for us here at the New York Post stay tuned for more news around the Nets as we see what they do in the upcoming draft and NBA free agency awesome

Dexter Henry is joined by Brooklyn Nets beat writer for the Post, Brian Lewis to discuss the Nets plans for the upcoming offseason.

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