Keon Ellis stole the ball from Moussa Diabaté. Five seconds later, Michael Porter Jr. finished an alley-oop layup off Ellis’ pass, cutting the Charlotte Hornets’ lead to six with 8:32 left Wednesday.
Ellis played all 12 minutes of the fourth quarter. Drake Powell, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf didn’t play a minute all night.
Brooklyn used 10 players in its 110-103 season-opening loss at Barclays Center, leaving three members of last season’s five-player first-round class waiting for their first minutes of Year 2. By Friday, head coach Jordi Fernández was explaining how those initial decisions were made and how much room he wanted to give his chosen group to improve.
“Obviously nobody has guaranteed minutes,” Fernández said after practice.
The competition extends across the roster. Terance Mann and Josh Minott also received DNPs.
For Fernández, those choices draw on considerably more than one game.
“It’s all the work they put through the summer and then through training camp and then the preseason games,” he said.
Last season, Brooklyn led the NBA in rookie minutes and finished 20-62. The five first-rounders return with a season of experience and more competition. Julius Randle’s arrival gives Fernández another established scorer alongside Porter. Rookie Mikel Brown Jr. adds another guard who can create with the ball.
Fernández wants the players who earned the first opportunities to have some continuity. He saw good intentions in the opener, along with plenty that needed correcting.
“As long as the attitude is good and the intentions are good, I got to be a little bit patient with what I want to see,” he said. “But then at the same time, if I feel I have to make changes because of the benefit of the group, I will.”
The first assignments came from months of work. Fernández described changing things immediately after Game 1 as a sign of “freaking out.” He wants to see the players already in the rotation build on what earned them those roles in the first place.
The staff’s evaluations include proper box-outs, running to the corners and touching the paint. Fernández pointed to those actions Friday as measures of how hard the Nets played. Brooklyn had fallen short of its own expectations in those areas against Charlotte.
Amid what Fernández described as opening-night anxiety across the group, Ellis earned praise for “a lot of composure.” The guard scored seven points for the night, but in the fourth quarter alone, he had three assists, two steals and no turnovers.
Nolan Traoré’s next opportunity will come with his own adjustments to make. He played 15:31 in the opener and acknowledged Friday that he needed to use his speed more effectively.
“I think I have to bring more pace to the game,” he said. “That’s my strength, so I got to use it more.”
For Brown, the opportunities also depend on how much basketball his body is ready to handle. He played 19:48 in his debut and will remain on a minutes restriction Saturday in Cleveland. The Nets’ medical and performance staff has a plan to build his workload, and Fernández indicated that more minutes and back-to-backs were not imminent.
Porter described practices in which Brown had “won the day because he was killing.” Expanding his workload will also depend on how his body handles the accumulated minutes, Fernández said. The restriction affects which pairings the coach can explore. He wants to see Brown alongside Egor Dëmin, but fitting those minutes into the game also means preserving the rhythm of the other players.
“What I want is to find the right groups that can function together and be efficient, that work on both ends of the floor,” Fernández said. “That’s on me.”
While Fernández sorts through those combinations, Porter wants the players outside the rotation contributing to the group’s energy. When asked about the young teammates who did not play, he pointed to what they had shown during training camp and expressed confidence that their opportunities would come.
“So, right now it’s about being good teammates and bringing that energy, bringing that culture and enthusiasm to whatever your role is, whether you’re on the court or not,” Porter said.
Fernández’s instruction to Powell, Saraf and Wolf was to be ready when called and do whatever would help the team win.
Traoré knows how quickly an assignment can change. After playing in each of Wednesday’s first three quarters, he watched the entire fourth from the bench. When asked Friday how he would handle minutes that might fluctuate, he said he was mentally prepared.
“I mean, that’s just the job,” he said.