Admittedly, the last four years of Brooklyn Nets basketball have been nothing short of disappointing. Any fan can recognize that. Not too long ago, the Nets were a championship favorite, or at the very least, a contender. Now, as we enter the 2025-26 season, they’re widely expected to have the worst record in the NBA.<\/p>\n
Brooklyn opened the decade with legitimate title hopes under the duo of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. After a James Harden rental and a tenure that ended with drama and letdowns, the Nets were sitting in the middle for a short period: mediocrity. They made the playoffs in 2023, but only because of what Durant and Irving did before the trades. In 2024, they went an uneventful 32-50.<\/p>\n
The issue was that the Nets didn’t have their own first-round pick. However, after trading Mikal Bridges last June, Brooklyn’s future was revived. The team had a clear direction, and it was to rebuild and draft talent for the future. Last season was a step toward the right path: 26-56.<\/p>\n
The Nets managed to stock up on a league-record five first-round picks in the 2025 NBA Draft, but as August carries on, it seems like most outsiders are still laughing at Brooklyn. Why?<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s because the Durant-Irving was a disappointment, or maybe it’s because there are a lot of concerns with each draft pick. Either way, the idea that the Nets are ‘doomed’ is false. In fact, they have a better situation than most rebuilding teams around the league.<\/p>\n
It’s better to be in the basement of the league, controlling your draft picks, than a ‘middle of the pack’ team failing to get a real shot at a franchise cornerstone. Brooklyn was in that second scenario in 2023 and 2024, but now the organization has put itself in a better position. Fans are already making edits of top prospects like AJ Dybantsa<\/a> and Darryn Peterson<\/a> in Nets jerseys.<\/p>\n On top of this, Brooklyn has significant cap space. Trading Cam Johnson for Michael Porter Jr. slightly hurt that sector, but it still got a future first-round pick out of the move. The Nets could end up with 12 first-round selections from 2026 to 2032. Not to mention, any of their rookies in the 2025 class could pan out, creating an extremely exciting young core.<\/p>\n Brooklyn still has to navigate its situation with restricted free agent Cam Thomas, but even if that piece of the puzzle gets lost, the team is in a position to rebuild the right way. It’s almost Oklahoma City Thunder-esque with how much cap space and draft picks the Nets have, and that certainly isn’t something to scoff at.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Admittedly, the last four years of Brooklyn Nets basketball have been nothing short of disappointing. Any fan can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-58668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}