When Noah Clowney left Alabama as the 21st pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, he had a listed height and weight of 6-foot-10 and 210 pounds. At the opening of his third training camp with the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets this week, Clowney still is listed as 6-10, but now his weight is 234, with 10 or so of those pounds added this summer.

“He just turned 21,” Nets coach Jordi Fernandez said at his training-camp press conference on Monday. “I don’t know if you guys know, but, you know, going into his third NBA season with all the experience he has and as young as he is and now he looks like a grown man. He is a person that we trust. We trust in his work ethic, his commitment, how his body looks right now, how his shot looks right now.

“And, you know, trying to improve those drive decisions. That is where he got himself in trouble a little bit last season. So very happy where he’s at right now, excited to watch him compete and go from there.”

Clowney said the added muscle should improve his “finishing.”

“That’ll help being able to get to my spots,” Clowney said, “where I want to go, get the two feet, being more of a enforcer when I’m driving the ball rather than trying to go around people, things like that. So it should be helpful. …

“Main thing was being able to get to the rim efficiently and be efficient when I get there, so I think I’ve improved in that aspect a lot. But we ain’t played no real games, so I don’t know yet. But I think so.”

As a rookie, Clowney played 23 games with Brooklyn and 34 games with the team’s NBA Gatorade League affiliate, the Long Island Nets. For his second year, Clowney spent the entire season with Brooklyn, but he missed 36 games with ankle injuries. Clowney had a 15-game block on the bench starting on Feb. 1, and the Nets finally shut him down for the season after March 29.

Clowney averaged 9.1 points and 3.9 rebounds while playing 22.7 minutes per game last season. But as his 3-point attempts rose from an average of 1.4 to 5.7 per game from his first to his second NBA season, his shooting percentage dropped from .538 to .358.

Clowney said he had worked during the summer on “trying to be able to just hoop.”

“It’s just like anything else in life,” Clowney said. “You practice it, you work on it, get better at it. Try to get better than you was the day before. So yeah, like I said, that’s the goal — be able to go off-script, push the ball more, not be in a box.”

With 69 NBA games of experience, Clowney is practically a veteran on Brooklyn’ roster. The Nets had an unprecedented five first-round picks in the 2025 NBA Draft.

But Clowney is projected to back up two of Brooklyn’s most experienced players.

The Nets obtained power forward Michael Porter Jr. from the Denver Nuggets in a trade on July 8. Porter averaged 18.2 points and 7.0 rebounds in his sixth season for Denver in 2024-25.

Nic Claxton averaged 10.3 points and 7.7 rebounds per game as Brooklyn’s center last season.

The Nets’ four-game preseason schedule has an international flavor, starting with a game against Hapoel Jerusalem from Israel on Saturday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The Nets play the Phoenix Suns on Oct. 10 and Oct. 12 at Venetian Arena in Macau, China. Brooklyn concludes its preseason schedule against the Toronto Raptors on Oct. 17 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario.

The Nets tip off their regular-season schedule against the Charlotte Hornets at 6 p.m. CDT Oct. 22 at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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