The Brooklyn Nets have been making some moves this offseason as they are retooling the roster ahead of a 2025-26 NBA season that will most likely be another tough one to watch. Brooklyn hasn’t made the moves to necessarily go all-in on making a playoff appearance, but it seems that there are some pundits who believe that the Nets could have done more.
“Someone has to score on bad teams, so Porter Jr. will have the green light from jump while he’s at Barclays Center,” The Athletic’s David Aldridge wrote when explaining ranking Brooklyn as the 22nd-best offseason thus far in the summer. Some of the notable moves that the Nets made during this offseason was selecting guard Egor Demin with the eighth overall pick along with trading for forward Michael Porter Jr.
“It feels like the Nets sold a little low on Johnson, though I get speculating on that ’32 first becoming a golden ticket,” Aldridge continues. “And while each of the five players Brooklyn got in the draft have solid skills, particularly Demin and Saraf, there’s no way the Nets planned to use all of their ’25 firsts. I’m pretty sure they hoped to use them to move up into the top five and get a real difference-maker who could accelerate the rebuild.”
To Aldridge’s point, Brooklyn essentially swapped out Johnson for someone in Porter that has a different style of play, but is also arguably a better scorer at the same time. Porter was the 14th overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft and that was considered a slide for the former Missouri Tiger due to questions over whether his back would hold up in the NBA.
The Nets’ 2025 Draft surprised plenty of people following the draft, especially with Brooklyn choosing to go into the event with five first-round picks only to later make all of those picks without some kind of trade happening. Nets general manager Sean Marks has made some interesting decisions over the past couple of seasons, but it seems that people like Aldridge are down on the vision of this offseason.
This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: The Athletic ranks the Nets as having the 22nd-best NBA offseason
Reporting by Sharif Phillips-Keaton, Nets Wire / Nets Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
