Sean Marks explains rationale behind Nets’ bold 2025 NBA Draft strategy

Sean Marks explains rationale behind Nets’ bold 2025 NBA Draft strategy

The Brooklyn Nets went bold — really bold — in last week’s NBA Draft, becoming the first team in NBA History to use all five of their first round picks. They were one of the few teams expected to be a potential trade up candidate because of not only how many first-round picks they had, but where they had them.

They didn’t, staying pat — with a few questionable picks as well.

Brooklyn ultimately drafted Egor Demin No. 8 overall, followed by Nolan Traore (No. 19), Drake Powell (22), Ben Saraf (26) and Danny Wolf (27). Four of those players (Demin, Traore, Saraf, Wolf) have duplicitous skillsets, though Wolf is a 7-foot big while the rest were lead guards for their respective schools/programs.

General Manager Sean Marks explained his rationale during the team’s introductory press conference on Tuesday.

(Quotes via Nets Daily, SI.)

“It’s obviously best available — that factors in — but it’s also the scouting work that we’ve done on these guys throughout not just this year but leading up to this year would lead us to believe it’s a versatile class, right?” Marks said. “They can play multiple positions. As Jordi just mentioned, multiple ball-handlers. I think to be able to come in here and limit guys and say, ‘You can only fit into this category or this position,’ you’ve heard all the cliches, position-less basketball and so forth. But you want high IQ guys. That’s what we’ve got here.

“We saw attributes throughout the year of how each one of these played individually. Our development staff’s proven that they’ve done a great job, and I think that gives me utmost confidence in developing these five guys. And if I don’t think we had that confidence in our stuff, we probably wouldn’t have done it. The sky’s the limit for all of them.” 

Every team has their own board — as evidenced by the Portland Trail Blazers drafting Hansen Yang, a consensus second-round prospect, No. 16 overall after trading back. We still have to play the games and a few of these names or more than capable of adapting, but the on-court fit appears questionable.

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Not to mention, the insane thing about using five first-round picks is all of their clocks start the same with rookie-scale contracts. Head coach Jordi Fernandez did a great job last year, but he’s going to have a tall task finding ways to develop all of these players when the majority of them have similar skillsets and operate in similar areas of the floor.

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