3 Takeaways from the Brooklyn Nets Back-to-Back to begin 2025

Change comes fast. Ask any Nets fan who watched the last two games, with one eye on the scoreboard, the other on Tankathon

The Brooklyn Nets closed out 2024 in a promising, yet peculiar position. As a franchise with an abundance of rebuild assets — yet with an admirable, if thematically flawed will to win, they’ve had their fans’ brains in a blender for months now.

Flipping calendars offered them no relief. The Nets split their first two contests of the year, falling to the fellow Flagg-pursuant Toronto Raptors before besting the alleged title-contending Milwaukee Bucks hours later.

Backward as that is, those were the right games for the Nets to win and lose in terms of the big picture. The Toronto loss counts double regarding the tank, as it simultaneously gives the Raptors a win and cuts a full game out of their lead over the Nets for lottery positioning.

The win vs Milwaukee, while harmful to Brooklyn’s own pick placement, wasn’t entirely detrimental to the tank, as the Nets also possess the Bucks’ first this year. It consequently increased in value after Milwaukee’s loss at Brooklyn’s hands.

I’ll cease the pick placement forecasting there, so as to avoid starting 2025 looking like Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia during his Pepe Silvia speech. There were also some on-court conclusions to draw from Brooklyn’s first two bouts of the season — and those are more deserving of our attention — at least for now. Let’s get into it.

Transition Ignition

Just like everyone predicted, D’Angelo Russell returned to the Nets in 2025, and in doing so, he brought the keys unlocking and igniting Brooklyn’s fast break.

Up until the Toronto and Milwaukee games, the Nets averaged 18.7 transition points per game — the second fewest by any team all year. That was largely due to Dennis Schröder, who plays at slower pace more focused on dicing up defenses in the half court, commanding the offense for much of the year.

Alas, Schröder wasn’t the sole culprit nerfing Brooklyn’s transition offense either. In the seven games without him before these last two, the Nets averaged an even gentler 12.7 transition points per contest.

D’Angelo Russell, on the other hand, has buffed it up. In his first game back with the Nets, he consistently pushed the ball up the floor in a fashion we’ve only seen from Brooklyn in a few short spurts all year.

As a result, the Nets finished with 21 transition points vs the Raptors — their most in a game since that pre-Thanksgiving upset in Phoenix. When they played that same Raptors team roughly two weeks ago, they tallied only five.

Last night, Brooklyn tallied 16 break points vs the Bucks. That’s still below the league average, but nonetheless illustrates progress, being the most they’ve had vs the Bucks all season (13, 12, and 12).

A clear beneficiary of Russell’s tendency to look up has been Nic Claxton. With his unique speed at the center position, a large percentage of his points in years past came with him operating as a rim-runner in transition.

More of those opportunities came his way over the past two games, with him combining for 32 points in each contest. Barring another trade where the Nets look to flip Russell, they’ll continue to come, for him and everyone else out on the floor.

Pick-and-Roll Renaissance

Now, onto the halfcourt.

The disintegration of the pick-and-roll in Brooklyn’s offense represents another major repercussion stemming from the Schröder trade. Without Dennis’s ability to put pressure on the rim, pass off the screen, and hit a jumper off a pop, Brooklyn’s used dribble-handoffs to ignite their offense.

It’s been a faint spark, leading to a measly candle flame, if anything at all. All smoke, no fire. In the two week stretch after the Schröder trade and before Russell’s arrival, Brooklyn posted a 104.1 offensive rating. That ranked worst in the league over that time frame. Before that, the Nets owned a 113.1 rating, good for 13th best.

However, over Brooklyn’s last two games, they earned an offensive rating of 115.3, ranking ninth best in the league. What’s the big difference between the Nets in 2025 vs the two weeks before? Once again, D’Angelo Russell.

While Brooklyn’s prodigal son is as quick off the ball as Schröder was, he’s more crafty in how he manipulates the defense to find space off screens, sees the floor slightly better, and can heat up from all three levels in a moment’s notice.

As the most likely candidate for Russell to call upon as a screener, Claxton is again first in line to benefit from this change (or reestablishment) within Brooklyn’s offense. He already has too, enjoying what might be his best pair of games all season after posting back-to-back double-doubles for the first time since October.

The same goes for backup big Day’Ron Sharpe, who finished as a +17 last night and reached double figures for the third time this year in the Toronto game.

Two games resembles a rather small sample size, but the numerical boost born out of it bares consideration nonetheless. At the very least, keep an eye out to see how these figures stick when Brooklyn plays Detroit, Utah, and Denver next week. While the Pistons allow the fifth most opponent points per game to pick-and-roll ball-handlers this year, the Jazz and Nuggets rank top five in fewest.

Expect More Lineup Fluidity

Although Cam Thomas returned prior to the New Year, he stayed in street clothes for the New Year’s Day win over the Raptors to manage his hamstring injury. He then returned a day later to drop 24 on the Bucks, coming off the bench while doing so.

At least until Thomas returns to full strength, it appears the Nets will implement a flip-flop strategy with Ben10 and CT during back-to-backs where each plays a game rather than one together, just as they did to begin the new year. That suggests Brooklyn’s rotation will be fluid as ever in January — and it’s only the tip of the iceberg in that regard as well.

Also rejoining the lineup yesterday was Ziaire Williams, who returned after a 12-game absence due to a left knee sprain. While he’s less likely to bargain for a starting role, he remains a moving part of the rotation, particularly as injuries mount with Cam Johnson twisting his ankle down the stretch of the Milwaukee game and Noah Clowney injuring his hip the day before. Finally, there’s determining where the newly added Russell fits on the Jordi list.

For a moment, it looked like Brooklyn’s rotation, or at least the starting five, might soon be cemented with Schröder gone and Simmons as the lone point guard. But now over the course of these last two days, whether by trade, scheme, or injury, the Nets rotation seems destined to remain a conundrum for the foreseeable future if not for the head coach who seems to thrive on this. Better to be rich with nothing to spend it on than the reverse.