Takeaways from a grim, winless stretch of Brooklyn Nets basketball

The tank is on, the starters are all injured, but Brooklyn Nets basketball persists, and so do their players. Really.

“I know this is kind of like a rebuild situation, but we’ve got to go in there like we want to win regardless of what the front office is expecting.”

An honest Ben Simmons hit the nail on the head after the Brooklyn Nets’ 112-111 OT loss on Sunday night to the Utah Jazz, their fifth in a row. The only thing he got wrong is that this isn’t “kind of like” a rebuild situation.

But Simmons’ words — as reported by Brian Lewis of The New York Post — were as revealing as any Net has offered this season. (He is on a max contract, after all.)

The players know good and well that their front office wants them, no, expects them to lose games. That’s why Brooklyn has been without 8-10 players for each game they’ve played in the past week; no rotation-quality player is powering through a bump or bruise at this time of the season. The Nets played ten guys in Utah; half of them are either in their rookie or sophomore years.

This is bottoming out, or in other words, reaping all those wins Brooklyn sowed earlier in the season. The NBA can be really dumb sometimes.

That’s not to say there aren’t positives, even as fan loyalty will be put to the test during a string of weeknights where West Coast games tip at 10:30 p.m. ET. Those aforementioned rookies and sophomores, especially the guys on two-way contracts, are playing well. The Nets still play hard, and Head Coach Jordi Fernández is still making the most of what he has…

It’s just that those positives mean so little in the long run. Brooklyn found Tyrese Martin and Tosan Evbuomwan off the two-way scrap heap, and both have been hooping, generally looking like real NBA players. If their play continues, that’s a real win for Brooklyn’s scouts and of course, fantastic outcomes for Martin and Evbuomwan. Their desperate energy are soothing on the eyes, and if it’s the start of real NBA careers for them, that’d just be heartwarming.

What’s the best-case (and therefore unlikely) scenario here? One of Martin or Evbuomwan is the 9th or 10th man on the next Brooklyn team that makes the playoffs?

Rebuilds, tanks — no matter what you call them and however brief they are — in a word, stink.

“I’m pissed off,” said Nic Claxton after Sunday’s game. “We should have won but we just gotta keep chopping. We’ve been losing a lot, and everybody’s tired of losing. They sat out all their players and we still lost.”

Hopefully, Clax can take solace in two things, though this should ease NetsDaily commenters more than him.

1. The Nets sat out all of their players too.
2. Brooklyn is not Utah, now three years into major losing, and without any franchise-changing young talent to show for it.

Nothing in this world is promised.

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Except for Tosan Evbuomwan, apparently.

After going undrafted in 2023 following a fine career at Princeton, the big Brit played for two NBA teams and three different G League teams (including the same one … twice … before catching on with the Brooklyn Nets. He impressed at all those stops, and even had Detroit Pistons fans clamoring to keep him on the NBA roster at the end of last season. It’s reminiscent of how Portland Trail Blazers fans felt when the team cut Trendon Watford at the end of training camp last year.

Nevertheless, he’s been solid in his five games as a Brooklyn Net, not exactly his fault the team has lost all of them.

For one, it’s refreshing to watch a sophomore (though he turns 24 in a month) with such a strong physical profile play for Brooklyn. He looks like a bodybuilder and can bounce off contact, an uncommon trait among young Nets over the last decade.

At a 6’7”, he’ll probably have to a slightly under-sized forward to make it in the league. That’s where his strength really helps him out, but so too does his foot-speed. In his brief Brooklyn career, he’s shown an ability to guard on the perimeter…

In 204 career 3-point attempts across the G League and NBA, he’s shooting 36.3% on mostly stationary looks. Not fantastic, but it could be serviceable if he continues to handle the rock. Reminder: Evbuomwan played a point-forward role for Princeton setting the school record for assists in his final season there.

The above clip shows a transition alley-oop, and though he hasn’t made any highlight reads, the former Ivy Leaguer is more than capable of making the correct ones. Pair that with a functional handle, which he uses to get by bigger, slower players…

…and the Nets might really have something here.

In a dark season only set to grow darker, Evbuomwan is a nice character. He appeared out of thin air in January with the upper body of Adonis, a cool name, and a rare backstory, and he tries everything, dribbling around slower defenders and posting up smaller ones, shooting some threes, blocking some shots. Put simply: he asserts himself out there. Evbuomwan is far from perfect, but I’m a fan.

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The sample size is extremely small, but Evbuomwan, averaging 18 and 6 over his last three games, might be passing Jalen Wilson, AKA the lightskin Tom Brady…

…as Brooklyn’s most interesting sophomore.

Wilson’s pre-draft concerns are really starting to surface, now that he’s shooting just 31.3% from deep in his NBA career, right in line with his averages over four seasons at the University of Kansas. Where else is he providing value?

Per the NBA’s official website, Wilson is dead-last on the Nets in deflections-per-minute, and that matches the eye test. You don’t really notice JWill out there, hampered by a lack of length and foot-speed. It appears as if he’s caught in-between, not strong or physical enough inside to play a ‘forward’ type of role, but not quick enough to defend guards. Many of his reps on the perimeter look like this…

His rebounding rates on each end have been cut in half, and while much of that is simply due to a larger sample size, Wilson doesn’t have a ton of time to change his trajectory. At the start of next season, he’ll be 25 years old. As harsh as it sounds, he doesn’t excel at anything yet. Not 3-point shooting, not defense, not playmaking off the dribble, and in his sophomore season, not rebounding. He still does not have a dunk in the NBA.

It’s tough. I really like JWill as a person and competitor, and there are still flashes of strength on drives and timely 3-point shooting. He is generally in the right spots on both ends, and we’d see more of his ability to move off the ball if he was on a team with real offensive creators.

But in 2025, he’s showing why he fell into the 50s in the 2023 NBA Draft.

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Over four seasons in college and two in the NBA/G League, Tyrese Martin has stabilized in the mid-30s as a 3-point shooter. With firm off-guard size, that’s tough, and likely why he hasn’t caught on with an NBA team sooner.

But I had no idea that Martin had this much juice off the dribble. He can really drive and pass…

Martin nearly closed out the Utah Jazz in regulation. Three of Brooklyn’s final possessions went

• Martin drive and dump-off to Claxton for a layup,
• Martin drive for his own layup,
• Martin drive and alley-oop to Claxton that was just an inch too high, but one Clax could have finished anyway.

The ex-UConn Husky probably isn’t a full-time ball-handler at the NBA level, but it really seems that he can come off some handoffs and screens on the second-side of actions and make plays. If Martin can just hit enough threes when defenders go underneath, he’s probably an NBA rotation player and another impressive, if slightly inconsequential find for Brooklyn.

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It’s slim pickings in Nets World to start 2025. Though it is worth pointing out that Reece Beekman has nailed two big catch-and-shoot threes in his last two appearances, the main question surrounding his game entering the 2024 NBA Draft.

This team, as bad as they are with all the injuries, is kind of fun. With Day’Ron Sharpe as the backup center, the Nets have a pesky, damn-near athletic bench that will annoy the hell out of their opponents. As for the starters, I didn’t write about Keon Johnson, but he’s figuring out some of his driving ability, getting to a two-foot stop in the paint more often and exploding upward. Ben Simmons looks like a functional NBA player these days!

Does any of this really matter, long-term for the Nets? Would I trade all of it to move up a few spots in the upcoming NBA Draft Lottery, which the league announced on Monday would occur on May 12? Probably.

But let’s try to enjoy the basketball while we have it.

Brooklyn’s next contest will tip-off against the Portland Trail Blazers at 10:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday night.