Brooklyn Nets sophomore class ready for opportunities during rebuild

All three members of the Brooklyn Nets’ 2023 NBA Draft class will be playing in Las Vegas Summer League starting Friday, and all three are a safe bet to get real minutes next season in Brooklyn.

But while all three sophomores find themselves with an increased opportunity at ground zero of a rebuild — under a new, player-development-focused coaching staff no less — all three are in markedly different places in their basketball journeys.

Dariq Whitehead, in two years since leaving Montverde Academy as the #1 high school recruit in the nation by high school scouting services, has seen two injury-riddled seasons at Duke and in Brooklyn take him off the fast track to if not NBA stardom, then at least real NBA opportunity.

(Here’s the type of athlete scouts were dealing with, by the way, at age 15...)

Last season, though, the 19-year-old played a little over half-a-season with the G League’s Long Island Nets before undergoing lower-leg surgery, his third in an 18-month-span. Whitehead is still younger than most of the players selected in this June’s draft, and won’t turn 20 till August 1, but he doesn’t believe he has all the time in the world to prove he's an NBA-level contributor.

Yet, he’s seemingly off to the right start in year two, telling reporters Tuesday — before Brooklyn flies their Summer League squad to Vegas — that this “is 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.”

Whitehead says that he first felt the shin splints as soon as he got to Long Island last fall, but tried to gut it out anyway. That plan lasted till January when he underwent surgery.

“I wanted to fight through it because I’ve been in that position before and I just got drafted and I came in injured, so I wanted to push through it and see if I could work to overcome that. But eventually we came to a decision with Sean [Marks} and them, that the best decision for me was to go get the surgery so that I could start to feel good and get back on pace to being who I was. It was one of the best decisions we’ve made.”

Undergoing two foot surgeries and then another one to correct shin splints before age-20 is very much a negative, duh, as Whitehead missed out on valuable development reps at 18 and 19 years old that his peers seized.

But the silver lining is that if the New Jersey kid is truly feeling different, then the player who shot 38% from the floor in 17 G League games and who played 24 total NBA minutes in two appearances last season has much more to offer. That the ultra-five-star recruit is not too far beneath the surface.

Las Vegas Summer League games are messy at best, a total cluster**** at worst, and while players do show flashes, it's hard to know what to put stock in and what is meaningless. However, Nets fans do have one thing to look out floor when their team takes the floor this weekend; how is Whitehead moving? That’s the film that doesn’t lie.

“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,” says Whitehead. “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.”

Though Whitehead isn’t the only 19-year-old Nets fans have reason to be excited about, Noah Clowney provokes optimism a bit differently. It’s not grounded in his pre-draft hype, though the Nets did select him one spot ahead of Whitehead in 2023 with the first pick from the Kevin Durant trade.

It’s that Clowney, despite being viewed as a skinny project big who would take a while, played well in the G League last year before coming up to Brooklyn and turning in some truly great games as a teenager as a Net, full-stop.

He joined lanky luminaries like Jaren Jackson Jr. and Victor Wembanyama as rare teenagers to put up certain 3-point and block numbers in NBA games, perhaps becoming a real player sooner than we thought.

But he’s not bringing too much individual pressure to Vegas: “I’m going in with a good mindset, win, have fun, obviously showcase that I can do different things. But I don’t really have individual goals for Summer League, I just want to win games.”

As for what he’s been working on since the end of last season, the Alabama product says, well, “everything. I mean, like a little bit of everything. Quite literally. Offensively, I’m trying to be able to play multiple positions, obviously, but even defensively, being able to close out and contain and guard without needing help. Obviously nobody’s gonna be perfect, but trying to be the best you can.”

That’s really the theme of these new Nets, isn’t it? They won’t be perfect, and won't even be good in the coming months, but “trying to be the best you can” does get you 90% of the way toward a coherent rebuilding strategy of culture-setting and improvement.

Clowney and his fellow sophomores know that’s a strategy that benefits them, setting them up for opportunities they may not have on other teams: “I love [Mikal Bridges], but like, to see us going into more of a rebuilding standpoint, that’s an amazing opportunity to me, and I gotta try to take advantage of that.”

He likely didn’t coordinate his answer on the topic of rebuilding with Whitehead, but it damn sure sounded like it on Tuesday, when the latter said of the rebuild, “I look at it as opportunity for me to get on the court and a bunch of other young guys. Just to grow our games and develop into who we want to be in the NBA, and eventually be on their level if not higher than where they were and just continue to take things from them and look at it as an opportunity.”

Opportunity, then is the keyword for Brooklyn’s youngsters. Hell, it’s hard to imagine the looming opportunities for 23-year-old Trendon Watford weren’t a factor in his decision to sign Brooklyn’s qualifying offer and return for his second season in the black-and-whites.

Jalen Wilson is also 23 years of age, four years older than Watford, but after a stellar four-year career at Kansas, he joins Clowney and Whitehead to complete Brooklyn’s trio of sophomores, albeit the elder statesman of the group.

Yet, for all his experience as a Jayhawk, even winning an NCAA title, he says the biggest part of his rookie year in 2024 was the experience of playing in high-stakes NBA games.

“One of the first games we had, we had the Mavericks and Boston in the same week, both close games. I just wanted to get the experience playing against other superstars in the league and I felt like I was able to get out there, get minutes and that’s the main thing with young players coming in. You just want to be able to play with those guys, now I’m on the same court as them, now I’m playing against them, now I got a rebound, now I got a bucket, just build that confidence. If I can do that while they’re on the court, I should be able to play. So, I think that was the biggest thing for me, just getting that experience.”

And the biggest thing for Wilson looking forward? That’s right, opportunity.

“Like Noah said, it’s an opportunity for us ... people are going to come and go and we just have to be ready to play, and that’s where we’ve been locked in.”

Locked in they are, as all three of Whitehead, Clowney, and Wilson praised Jordi Fernández and the new coaching staff for bringing intensity to these Summer League practices. The descriptor “hands-on” was frequently thrown around in their pressers, and while Juwan Howard and Steve Hetzel have gotten positive reviews from the guys, even Fernández has drawn praise despite being on the other side of the country with Team Canada in Las Vegas, prepping for the Olympics.

“He sent us texts the other day,” said Whitehead. “We didn’t have the best practice. He texted and said we need to pick it up. He sent us a text that he watched it and that led to us having a great practice. He sent us all texts around two, three in the morning, I guess they were just finishing practice or whatever. We came in, talked about it, talked about him sending us that text, and we picked it up the next day. So, just having a head coach who’s still involved while he’s not physically here, it’s just huge for us, especially as a young team.”

These Brooklyn Nets know who they are, even the baby-faced ones. Sean Marks did not trade into the draft to make a selection this June, and while they did sign undrafted free agents to training camp deals, it’s Whitehead, Clowney, and Wilson who the team will look to for that type of growth this coming season.

For the sophomores, they know their opportunities are coming, that the results won’t be excellent right away but their process better be. Whitehead must regain some of the form that catapulted him onto the national scene as a teenager, while Clowney’s play has now met with expectations, as has Jalen Wilson’s after being the most consistent NBA contributor of the three in 2024.

That starts with Las Vegas Summer League, and Brooklyn’s first game will tip off at 8:00 p.m. ET, Friday against the Indiana Pacers on NBA TV.

• N.J. native Dariq Whitehead ‘ready to go’ for rebuilding Nets after series of injuries ($) - Adam Zagoria - N.J.com
• Nets’ Whitehead ready to prove he’s healthy again in Summer League ($) - Evan Barnes - Newsday
• Nets’ Noah Clowney reveals silver lining of Mikal Bridges trade - Erik Slater - Clutch Points