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2024 Las Vegas Summer League Primer: Brooklyn Nets

Brooklyn Net basketball is sort of back, here’s what to watch out for

By Lucas Kaplan
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Brooklyn Nets v Detroit Pistons Photo by Nic Antaya/Getty Images

The Brooklyn Nets will be pretty next season, in year one of a rebuild leading up to a much-hyped draft class with an even more hyped prospect who is the overwhelming favorite to go #1 overall in Cooper Flagg.

And yet, Nets basketball is only sort of back today, Friday July 12, the first day of Las Vegas Summer League. Because, well, it’s Summer League, and even the NBA’s worst teams deserve more respect than the type of basketball that often gets played at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center at this time of year.

The combination of unfamiliarity within the rosters and admirable hustle of fringe-NBA players trying to climb over the edge, not to mention the AAU-like atmosphere of the wall-to-wall schedule gives you results like Victor Wembanyama shooting 2-of-13 in his debut, or Trae Young shooting 23% from the floor over his first trip to Vegas...

It’s a beautiful train-wreck that maybe only NBA junkies can find the beauty, but it is basketball, and it is the Nets. And in all fairness, it’s not nothing.

This summer, it starts with Dariq Whitehead, who’s gone under the knife for three lower-leg surgeries since he left high school as the #1 prospect in the country two years ago. Is the athleticism back? He seems to think so.

“I’d say this is the first time in my career since probably high school where I’m feeling like I could get out there and be myself again and contribute the way I know I should contribute,” he said at practice before the team flew west.

Is he creating space to get his jumper off, stopping on dimes and changing directions, is he elevating when he takes it to the cup. Just in general, will he look more athletic than the guy who shot under 40% in the G League in his rookie year. Some of the other issues he had, like playmaking-decisions losing his handle in tight spaces won’t be fixed overnight, but we may be able to get a pretty good sense if Whitehead is back on the right track here in Vegas.

“It’s been a lot, it’s been a tough road but like I said, I’m built for it. I just want to make sure I come out the player I was before that, and I know I will, long as I got the right mindset. And Summer League is the first step to getting back to that, just going out there playing hard every game and letting that flow come back.”

Noah Clowney, despite a genuinely exciting rookie campaign, still isn’t too far along in his development path. In fact, I took a look at the specifics of his rookie season across Long Island and Brooklyn for the Nets content team themselves, part of our Film Focus series...

The shot-blocking and perimeter defense is undeniable, and it’ll likely translate to weaker competition this summer. If you recall, Clowney did not look great this time last year, another evidence point against over-reactions, but it was in part because he simply wasn’t strong enough.

The skinny 18-year-old has become a slightly less skinny 19-year-old though, and while his body isn’t done filling out, I’m watching how he handles the physicality and occasional lawlessness of Vegas hoop. Specifically, is he finishing strong in the lane? Two-point percentage will be his most important statistical indicator, to me, next season. Regardless if he’s playing next to another big, he’s still gotta be a strong finisher through contact, at 6’10”.

I’ll also enjoy watching Steve Hetzel coach the team. He is Jordi Fernández’s right-hand man this season, second-in-command, and while the way these Summer League Nets play isn’t an indicator of his competency, his demeanor on the sidelines is at least worth noting, given how Whitehead has praised him early on.

“I love Steve. For me, he’s a coach who — he’s not going to sit there and give you the most compliments and stuff, but he’s going to be hard with you ... Not gonna give you a lot of compliments, he’s gonna be hard on you, and eventually that got me to where I was in high school ... I feel like those are the type of coaches I respond well to, and I’ve been the best throughout my playing career with.”

Will we get a look at Fernandez’s offensive and defensive schemes nonetheless? Hetzel who was once Fernandez’s boss, then his successor, on the Cleveland Cavaliers G League team, says what you see in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas.

“From our standpoint, as a group, as a coaching staff from Jordi and also the front office, we don’t see our style of play changing necessarily with our roster compared to the summer league,” Hetzel said. “And that’s the importance of summer league is to set a foundation of how we want to play.”

And what might that look like?

“So we want our Brooklyn Nets team to be disruptive, physical and help, and we want to play fast and share the ball. So the messaging, it will just carry over into that team. And so we believe that this simplistic approach, but if we hang our hat on those things, that’s what we believe successful teams do.”

Not surprisingly, that’s also how Fernandez has described his coaching philosophy with Team Canada: fast, physical, facilitating.

Elsewhere, it’d be nice, though not crucial, for Jalen Wilson to play even better than he did last summer as one of the oldest players on UNLV’s campus this week. It’s also my first look at a couple 20-year-olds that could raise eyebrows if things break their way.

The first is Jaylen Martin, who the Nets poached from the New York Knicks’ G League team back in February, signing him to a two-way contact. Martin is guard/wing tweener at 6’5”, but possesses enough athleticism to keep turning heads...

The other is ex-Villanova guard Mark Armstrong, childhood friends with Whitehead and a once-hyped guard prospect, renowned for his athleticism, though having struggled thus far to find an area of the floor he can consistently score from.

This is the fun part of any team’s rebuild: looking at young players who might be future stars and ultimately building blocks of a year — or years’ — long process. That can include your own draft picks, developing players from your G League team, players who other teams have dumped, injured players, etc.

In terms of the Brooklyn roster — they currently have two openings on their NBA roster and another two on two-way deals. The Nets have a number of hopefuls looking at those spots. Keon Johnson and Jacob Gilyard played on two-year deals last season but didn’t get a qualifying offer at the end of June. They’re on their own.

KJ, still only 22, would seem to have the best shot of graduating to a standard deal. The hyperathletic Johnson, whose 48” max vertical is still the best ever recorded at the NBA Draft coming, has played 82 NBA games over three seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers, Portland Trailblazers and Nets where he averaged 6.2 points and shot 40.0% from three in six games last season. He averaged .

“It’s really their interest that they’ve shown to me at the beginning,” Johnson, 22, told Brian Lewis. “Brooklyn had interest in me during the draft. They couldn’t get me in the draft, but really just having an organization around me that is hands-on and wants to see me grow.

“So I feel like with the free agency that I have right now, all I’m focused on is just someone giving me the opportunity to play ball. I feel like everything else will settle itself whenever I step out onto the court. But right now I’m just focused on step [one], being on the court and showing what I can do.”

Johnson also revealed that Brooklyn was interested in him in the run-up to the 2021 NBA. He was drafted by the Knicks at No. 21, then immediately dealt to the Clippers. That’s six spots above Cam Thomas, eight above Day’Ron Sharpe.

Johnson also has a friend in court in Hetzel, who worked with Johnson as an assistant two years ago with the Blazers. Hetzel likes what he’s seen with KJ in camp.

“I’ve seen tremendous growth from his rookie year,” Hetzel said. “We saw him grow in Portland, and now being away from him for a season and coming back and seeing him, he’s continued to grow. He has NBA experience in terms of years, but he’s still a very young man, so he has a long career ahead of him if he continues to grow the way he has.

Also, keep in mind, anything can happen in Vegas! We’re never short on Summer League stories, with what feels like two-thirds of the NBA descending on the desert at its hottest. Trades, more free-agent signings, unexpected ballers?

Whatever happens, I’ll be here covering the chaos from a Nets perspective for the first three days of the madness. Game 1 vs. the Pacers starts at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBA TV.

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