Noah Clowney progress report: What has the Brooklyn Nets forward shown in his sophomore season?

Despite all the flashes, Noah Clowney still has a ways to go. But given what he’s shown so far, that’s far from a bad thing.

I originally had a long, verbose introduction about how the development of non-future Hall of Famers in the NBA is often a grueling, seesaw process. There’s ups, downs, surprises, days of uncertainty; most of it can be summed up in this Mark Daigneault quote where he compares that grind to the importance of eating your “broccoli” vs. chasing the instant gratification of “Skittles,” you get the point…

The full quote is less lame than I made it sound.

It’s an obvious point, but one I find myself stressing to remember when evaluating Noah Clowney’s sophomore season, which is only 26 appearances and 537 minutes old. A half-year shy of 21, he is a month younger than 2024 #3 overall pick Reed Sheppard.

And yet, I think Noah Clowney created some expectations for his sophomore year by showing up in Brooklyn for the last three weeks of his rookie campaign and impressing everybody with 3-point shooting and shot-blocking.

After a winter of true misery for the 2023-24 Brooklyn Nets, it didn’t matter that it was just a three-week stretch at the famously fickle final stretch of an NBA season. Clowney was a lanky teenager playing not just effective, but exciting NBA minutes as a rookie. Threes, blocks, switching on defense!

Then, Brooklyn flashed the REBUILDING signal over Gotham in the offseason, and suddenly, Noah Clowney’s development became a focal point of the 2024-25 season. Whoa. The guy played 370 NBA minutes in his rookie season.

Brooklyn (with a huge thanks to Long Island) may have gotten some data on him last season, but we’re still collecting the initial sample. Listen, nobody is debating whether Clowney is inexperienced, but we don’t really know what type of player he is yet.

For example: His block-rate has been cut nearly in half this season. That doesn’t mean he’s gotten “better” or “worse” at that skill since last April rather, it suggests his baseline as a shot-blocker is lower than his rookie season indicated.

So then. What are we learning about Noah Clowney in his second year?

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Above all, we’re learning how the Brooklyn Nets (and likely Jordi Fernández) view Clowney’s long-term development. Firstly, his offense is going to start with 3-point shooting off the catch.

Initially, this was a bit disappointing. I was bored of watching Clowney take catch-and-shoot threes already, eager to see him try and figure out his inside-the-arc offense. This was a symptom of those unfair expectations Clowney had created for himself in those three weeks of spring.

On Monday night against the Indiana Pacers, Noah Clowney shot 3-of-10 from distance. He woke up on Tuesday morning shooting a 38% from deep on nine 3PA/100 possessions in his career. Against, the samples are small, but Clowney’s volume has from three TRIPLED while his efficiency has also gone up. He’s taking 12 3PA-per-100 this season! For context, Bogdan Bogdanović is a 38.3% career 3-point shooter on 11 attempts per 100.

Clowney isn’t quite shooting off movement or the dribble like the Serbian Bogdanović, and the misses can look clunky, but the shooting flashes make up for all that…

It’s not the most exciting thing to watch Noah Clowney sit behind the arc, only involved in the offense when the ball comes to him for a catch-and-shoot opportunity.

But keep the big picture in mind: Clowney shot 28.3% from deep in his lone season at the University of Alabama. Now he’s on pace to join this group, a list of players 20-or-younger that shot (at least) seven 3PAs/100 on 37% accuracy, attempting at least 200 in season…

It is no sure thing Clowney joins this group, as he’s up to 132 attempts on the season with plenty of time for some cold stretches. But if he does (currently with a highest attempt-rate of that group), or even if he comes close, it changes his long-term outlook. Brooklyn isn’t looking at a capable floor-spacer, but a great one.

They might need to be.

Jordi Fernández’s strict orders that the young forward gets ‘em up should show how Brooklyn plans to flesh out his game.

It’s the dawn of his career, but I feel comfortable saying that Noah Clowney probably won’t do much traditional big-men stuff, offensively. He’ll get stronger, but his issues as an interior presence go beyond a youthful lack of muscle. Nets fans have seen Nic Claxton and Jarrett Allen bulk up in their early 20s, watching their finishing skills at the rim improve, but Clowney is not nearly as explosive or fluid in the air as those two.

Between a lack of upper-body strength, core strength, a naturally thin frame, and subpar explosion, Clowney has a ton to work on as a play-finisher…

The 20-year-old will get better at converting layups and hook shots. It’s a lower level of competition, but he ate contact and finished much stronger in 2024 Las Vegas Summer League than he did at 2023 LVSL.

Clowney will make similar improvements in the NBA, but looking at Gen Z’ers of a similar build that have effectively scored at the rim, it’s an different class of athlete: Yves Missi, Dereck Lively, Jaxson Hayes, Chet Holmgren, Victor Wembanyama, players that are either much stronger, explosive, longer, or some combination of the above.

Noah Clowney will struggle to become a league-average rim-scorer for his size; but that’s not a death sentence. Ever since he debuted for the University of Alabama, Clowney’s most intriguing offensive moments came by evading defenders, not by powering through or over them. This was true when he was playing for Long Island in 2023-24 too…

If there’s one thing about Noah Clowney that we’ve definitively learned in 2024-25, it’s that he’s an outside-in offensive player. Barring a drastic shooting downturn, he can be your second-worst 3-point threat, and it won’t handicap your offense’s 3-point volume. (So far, that’s a big understatement.)

This gives Clowney the opportunity to play against closeouts. That’s where the rest of his offensive game is headed, not as a pick-and-roll dive man who’s finishing way above the rim. It’s not that he can never play the 5, never set screens and dive to the rim or use his mobility to practice that fake-dribble-handoff game. But those look to be his ‘C’ skills; it’s not where his true promise lies on offense.

As Clowney continues to draw more frantic closeouts, he gives himself opportunities to drive around people rather than through them, as we see in that Long Island clip.

In recent weeks with Brooklyn, we’ve seen bits and pieces of a driving game, though his first and second reads are still to shoot the ball when he catches. When he does put it on the floor, Clowney doesn’t yet have go-to moves when he reaches a crowded paint. The couple floaters he’s taken have looked rough. But at the very least, he’s trying stuff, and occasionally it works out…

The most impressive part of his drives have come when he has to make passing decisions. For a 20-year-old sophomore who looked like a classic ‘tweener’ in his NBA career, making these passes off the dribble already is no small feat. Clowney doesn’t look like Andre Iguodala quite yet, but you can’t tell there’s something to work with given the way he reads the floor…

This is the path forward for Clowney, and assuming this use of his skills is a conscious decision from Brooklyn, it’s a smart one.

His decision-making has skewed heavily toward taking the three, but his general role aligns with his shooting development and best athletic traits. He is a lateral mover with a strong sense of space. The flashes of floor-reading have been much, much more enticing than those of his attempts to finish at the rim.

This scales him down from a center-type to a big wing on defense as well.

That’s not to say there aren’t still shot-blocking flashes, some thanks to a rare blend of length and anticipation…

For a young big, he rarely bites at pump-fakes and is exceptionally vertical when contesting rim attempts, a trait Jordi Fernández has often praised this season. Clowney is already Brooklyn’s best transition defender, capable of walling up against attackers at full-speed, or preventing 2-on-1 opportunities…

But the numbers have not kept pace with his rookie season, when Clowney was blocking shots at the rate Evan Mobley has in his career. This season, he’s blocking shots about often as Kevon Looney has in his career. (Per Cleaning the Glass.) Neither of those players — on the opposite extremes of the spectrum — are reasonable comparisons for Clowney as a forward-sized athlete.

There’s not a clear explanation — other than small-sample-size variance — for why his blocked shots have decreased. Maybe players are attacking him less, knowing the scouting report. And Brooklyn’s defense has been just awful with Clowney on the court, no matter if he’s next to Nic Claxton, Day’Ron Sharpe, or no center at all. He bares some responsibility for that, of course, but he’s a victim of it as well, with less opportunities to block shots.

Maybe Clowney is just settling in somewhere between Mobley and Looney as an average shot-blocker for his size, but a valuable one considering he doesn’t seem headed to play a ton of center. That’s the most likely answer, though increased defensive awareness with more experience should get him closer to the Mobley-side…

In terms of 1-on-1 defense, Clowney occasionally finds the perfect matchup

In Brooklyn’s first visit to Toronto this season, a 101-94 victory in December, Clowney gave Scottie Barnes some hell in their 1-on-1 matchups, forcing two late turnovers to seal the game. It made perfect sense; Barnes was initiating from the top of the key with Toronto’s starting guards out, and he’s not quicker or longer than Clowney.

Other times, the native South Carolinian suffers the same problems on defense that he does on offense; here, the pre-draft scouting report is still applicable unchanged. On this closeout to Brandon Ingram, his technique is sloppy, but Clowney moves his feet and changes direction to negate Ingram’s advantage. Then, he gets a shoulder to the chest..

The defensive end of the floor is slightly less of a mystery for Clowney and the Nets long-term. He’ll play some drop coverage as the team’s one true big occasionally, but that’s not where his skills lie. Clowney will likely always be a subpar rebounder and true force at the rim for his height, but he could make up for it with those lateral movement skills.

He can slide his feet well enough to stay in front of the taller creators — like Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram — and while adding muscle may not turn him into Ben Wallace at the rim, it should give him a fighting chance when Ingram gives him a shoulder. More reps guarding the perimeter should help Clowney with his technique out there, and slightly better awareness and positioning could lead to more blocks.

Kind of boring. Just about getting older, stronger, and smarter.

All the one-number metrics tell the same story about Noah Clowney this season. Offense up, defense down, overall impact up, creeping toward neutral. That’d be a huge win for a 20-year-old rotation player on a bad team.

It’d be easy to feel a little underwhelmed watching the #21 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft in his sophomore season. Clowney was essentially the sole beacon of light in Brooklyn for the last four months of his rookie season. And he only played three weeks of that.

They were three fun weeks though, setting up real expectations and hope for the 20-year-old, now with more eyes on him. Yet, in his sophomore season, there are stretches when Clowney disappears. He misses a couple 3-pointers, he doesn’t really touch the ball, he’s not guarding a super threatening player on the other team.

But if Noah Clowney and the Nets (and their fans) are focused on the broccoli, 2024-25 is no setback for Clowney.

“There’s no better development than playing real minutes,” said Fernández recently about his young forward. “That’s the best coaching that you can have, right?”

Now that Brooklyn is both injured and diving further into this rebuild through trade, perhaps more of their games will look like Monday’s loss to Indiana, where Clowney played 29 minutes and took 15 shots.

“I think Noah is a kid that — he takes it in, he cares, and then he comes back and he tries to do better. And that’s why I think he’s special, and I think that’s why he’ll play in this league for a long, long, long time, and he’ll be an impactful player. And so far, I’m very pleased with what he’s done for the group,” said his head coach.

It’s comforting that there’s a vision for Noah Clowney, a sensible one at that. Still, that can be tough to square with how far he is from reaching it, especially when he appeared to fast-track himself last spring.

Just focus on the broccoli, know and accept that it will take Clowney a while, and trust that Cam Johnson has an eye for talent: “His future is so bright. He doesn’t even know it yet, I don’t think.”