No team in history made more first-round selections than the Brooklyn Nets did on Wednesday night in the 2025 NBA Draft. They selected enough players to field an entire starting lineup, finishing with five players added to their roster in the span of a few hours.
- No. 8 – Egor Demin
- No. 19 – Nolan Traore
- No. 22 – Drake Powell
- No. 26 – Ben Saraf
- No. 27 – Danny Wolf
While the NBA Draft is all about taking chances on potential and hoping the prospects develop into rotational contributors, if not stars, each selection carries its own risk. Brooklyn’s front office may feel confident about the young prospects they’ve added to the roster, but other teams around the league couldn’t help but laugh at the Nets on draft night.
According to ESPN’s NBA insider Brian Windhorst, team executives and player agents were actually ridiculing the Nets over their draft selections.
“I got some people telling me some things about Brooklyn, people are making fun of these draft picks. I got people saying to me, executives and agents, they’re like, ‘I was watching them play three two-way guys during this year so that they can clap for taking the guys they’ve chosen.’ He’s like, ‘These two-way guys might be just as good as the guys they’ve taken.'”
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst on Brooklyn Nets
Who knows? Maybe the Nets will be the ones laughing at everyone else in a few years if a couple of their selections turn into gold. Still, it’s certainly surprising they didn’t cash in some of their assets for a veteran or even more selections in future years.
However, perhaps it’s better for the Nets to take chances on multiple prospects right away, giving the Nets a chance to evaluate a large group of young talent and deciding which ones to keep from there.
