How Nets missed an opportunity in the NBA Draft's first round

The first round of the 2025 NBA Draft has come and gone, and while some teams nailed the process, others blundered, failing to take advantage of advantageous circumstances.

The Brooklyn Nets fall into the latter category. On Wednesday night, Brooklyn entered having five first-round picks — Nos. 8, 19, 22, 26 and 27 — sparking legitimate speculation amongst media members that the Nets could move around the draft board. Instead, Brooklyn used all five picks, becoming the first team in league history to make five selections in the opening round.

With that much draft capital, the Nets should have packaged several picks to trade up and draft a potential cornerstone player. Ace Bailey was advertising to the entire league that his preferred destinations were the Washington Wizards, Nets and New Orleans Pelicans.

Trading up with the Charlotte Hornets or Utah Jazz was a plausible scenario for Brooklyn. Instead, the Nets stayed pat, allowing Utah to snatch Bailey off the board with the fifth pick.

Once that transpired, the Nets should have done everything to move up to the sixth pick with Washington and take the last guy of the elite tier — Tre Johnson, who the Wizards ultimately selected.

With those picks, Brooklyn landed Egor Demin (eighth overall), Nolan Traore (19th overall), Drake Powell (22nd overall), Ben Saraf (26th overall) and Danny Wolf (27th overall).

Three of those five players are point guards, which is a bit of an overkill at that position. In addition, while all of those players have potential, their ceilings are nowhere near the level of Bailey or Johnson, who were both realistic options for the Nets. 

Demin and Wolf are each floor-general forwards whose skill sets correlate closely. It feels as if Brooklyn fell in love with one archetype and invested too many expensive draft picks on that type of player. 

With multiple potential departures in free agency, the Nets could have all five of these incoming rookies play significant minutes within the rotation. That could be good for depth, but this is not the NFL, which provides more talent at deeper stages of the draft.

In the NBA, after the first 15-20 picks, it becomes incredibly difficult to identify players who could develop into cornerstone assets. Brooklyn should have sacrificed at least three of those picks to slide into the top five and draft the player of its choosing.

This becomes even more apparent given that the Nets also hold the No. 36 pick when the draft resumes on Thursday night.

It was a blown opportunity for general manager Sean Marks to make a significant move and potentially propel Brooklyn into relevancy with the Eastern Conference influx.