The Brooklyn Nets are expected to be among the NBA’s worst teams this season. After falling to the eighth pick in the 2025 draft, the rebuilding squad is aiming for a top selection in a highly-touted 2026 draft. The Nets boast the NBA’s youngest roster featuring an NBA-record five rookie first-round picks.
That inexperience and Brooklyn’s clear tanking agenda has inspired little confidence surrounding the team’s 2025-26 outlook. DraftKings Sportsbook set the Nets’ over-under win projection at 20.5. CBS Sports’ Keith Smith projected Jordi Fernandez’s squad to finish under that number.
“I was somewhat tempted to take Brooklyn’s over purely because of Jordi Fernandez and the Eastern Conference, but, as we’ve touched on with so many teams, incentives,” Smith wrote. “The Nets actively traded back for their 2025 and 2026 first-round picks. They paid a premium to do so. That went poorly in 2025, producing a No. 8 pick where no trade would’ve slotted them at No. 10. They basically have to get this tank right because the Rockets control their 2027 pick. So expect the Nets to leave no tanking stone unturned. Picking five ball-dominant rookies in the first round was a nice start.”
As Smith notes, Nets General Manager Sean Marks should be feeling pressure to maximize Brooklyn’s 2026 selection.
Will revamped Nets roster win 20 or fewer games during tanking campagin?
Kevin Sousa-Imagn Images
In conjuction with his Mikal Bridges trade last summer, Marks dealt four first-round picks to the Houston Rockets to reacquire Brooklyn’s 2025 and 2026 first-rounders. One of those four picks was the Phoenix Suns’ 2025 first-rounder, which the Nets finished just two spots ahead of. That miniscule early return led Brooklyn’s front office to position itself for a cleaner tank this season.
After Jordi Fernandez’s coaching and Dennis Schroder’s high-level play led the Nets to a surprise 9-10 start last season, the team enters 2025-26 with exclusively rookie point guards. They also traded their top player, Cam Johnson, to the Denver Nuggets for Michael Porter Jr. and an unprotected 2032 first-round pick. Those moves led Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe to take the under on FanDuel Sportsbook’s 19.5 win projection for Brooklyn.
“The front office Jordi-proofed the roster this year,” Lowe said on The Bill Simmons Podcast. “The only argument for the over is three of their starters are Cam Thomas, Michael Porter Jr. and Nic Claxton. Those are representative NBA starter-level players, and one of them, Cam Thomas, can handle the ball and run some of the offense. I just think, A, they’re all gonna be trade candidates, and B, if you hand an NBA team to rookie guards, and they have 1,000 of them, the results are generally disastrous… The offense is gonna be a mess.”
Nets owner Joe Tsai essentially admitted his team was tanking this season during a recent appearance on the All-In Podcast. Brooklyn’s 20.5 win projection is tied with the Washington Wizards for the NBA’s second-lowest, per DraftKings. Only the Utah Jazz (18.5) have a lower win total.
The Nets open the season on the road on Wednesday against the Charlotte Hornets.