The Brooklyn Nets have landed in Sacramento, gearing up for the California Classic with a squad of rookies, sophomores, and fringe NBA players looking to make an impression during this extended summer showcase. This means that Nets fans are dying to get their first look at Mikel Brown Jr. and Tyler Bilodeau (but mostly Mikel), as each officially signed his NBA contract on Thursday night\u2026<\/p>\n
Bilodeau, as previously reported, accepted a two-year contract, while the #28 overall pick, Joshua Jefferson, cannot officially sign with Brooklyn until July 6 at the earliest, when the Minnesota-Brooklyn trade is finalized. This also means Jefferson will not play in the California Classic on July 4, 5, or 6.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, you may want to temper expectations for the other guys as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to do anything that will put their health in danger,\u201d said Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez before the team headed out West. \u201cI think that we\u2019ve proven that over and over. We have very good medical and performance staff, and right now, I don\u2019t envision them playing all three games, because I think it\u2019s back-to-back-to-back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez did not comment on any specific young Net, though Nolan Traor\u00e9 isn\u2019t on the roster because he recently had his right knee scoped (and is expected to be ready for training camp.) Meanwhile, Grant Nelson, the leading candidate for Brooklyn\u2019s final two-way spot, is rehabbing from an offseason procedure and won\u2019t play in either league. Ultimately, it would not be surprising if Mikel Brown Jr. does not play in Sacramento at all \u2014 or if he only plays one game \u2014 and we miss out on the potential Brown Jr. vs. Darius Acuff showdown scheduled for July 4th.<\/p>\n
But Egor D\u00ebmin is still looking forward to a bright and productive future next to his new backcourt mate: \u201cI met him in the very first day, right, I was at the draft, and he seems like he\u2019s a very good guy, you know? I think we have a pretty good connection already, and it\u2019s going to be built up throughout the whole summer, the summer league, the California tournament, and throughout training camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
D\u00ebmin was much less eager to talk about his rehabbed plantar fasciitis. When asked if that bothered him during regular-season games last season, he merely said: \u201cI\u2019m good now. That\u2019s all I\u2019m worrying about.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old offered the same scripted response when asked if was still rehabbing the injury or if it was fully in the past. Alas, it is summertime in the NBA, and that means it\u2019s #MuscleWatch. D\u00ebmin said he\u2019s about 13-15 pounds heavier than this time last summer thanks to living in the weight room.<\/p>\n
Said Fern\u00e1ndez. \u201cThey look stronger, they\u2019ve done a great job, and not just strong where they don\u2019t move the same way. It\u2019s stronger and it\u2019s efficient, and I\u2019m sure you guys have seen [the five sophomores]. All of them have done a very, very good job, and hard work pays off, and we\u2019re gonna see it in summer league.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez was not allowed, per NBA rules, to discuss unofficial free agent signings just yet, including Day\u2019Ron Sharpe and Josh Minott. However, there is one obvious question: How the heck is he going to find time for all these players?<\/p>\n
When discussing the sophomore guards + Mikel Brown Jr., Fern\u00e1ndez said: \u201cEverything can happen. They\u2019re all basketball players, they\u2019re great playmakers, Ben is a very good defender, positional size, he can keep his chest in front of the ball. So, the good thing \u2014 the best thing \u2014 about the position that we are in right now, it\u2019s healthy competition, and they all going to challenge each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
In many ways, nothing has changed since last summer, though \u201c6400 minutes,\u201d in reference to the amount of minutes played by rookies for the Brooklyn Nets in 2025-26 (an NBA record) has become a new talking point for GM Sean Marks and Fern\u00e1ndez. But Brooklyn is no longer tanking. Even if they make another minor trade or two, there doesn\u2019t seem to be plenty of real minutes for all of Ben Saraf, Nolan Traore, Drake Powell, Noah Clowney, and Danny Wolf, among others. Where is the line between development and winning games?<\/p>\n
Marks predictably danced around this question last week, saying, \u201cI think that\u2019s our job to figure out between the staff in Long Island, the staff in Brooklyn. I mean, I think we did a really nice job of that last year, getting them real meaningful minutes. That was the goal to begin with, was not to just develop through practice. As we all know in the NBA season, what do you have, 25 practices a year? You\u2019re not going to get better just doing that. So, you know, going up there and testing your skills against the best, that\u2019s important, and I think there was no downtime last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
With that, the Nets head to SacTown. The major story is Mikel Brown Jr., if we\u2019re gonna get to see him there or if we\u2019ll have to wait until Las Vegas. Elsewhere, we\u2019ll be looking for Danny Wolf to school his younger opponents, Ben Saraf to hit some jumpers, Egor D\u00ebmin to get to the rack, and Drake Powell to expand(?) his game.<\/p>\n
Nets vs. Kings is scheduled for 5:00 p.m. ET on Saturday evening. If you have access to one of Gotham Sports, NBA TV, NBA League Pass, Amazon Prime, or ESPN+, you should able to catch the games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brooklyn Nets have landed in Sacramento, gearing up for the California Classic with a squad of rookies,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,11879,389,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-285765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-nets-features","tag-nets-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}