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It was hard to know what the Nets plan was when general manager Sean Marks used four of the team’s five first-round picks on guards in the 2025 draft.
One game into the second season of that group hasn’t provided any clarity.
Among the disappointments in Wednesday night’s ugly loss to the mediocre Hornets was the fact that none of those five players stood out in a positive way.
In fact, only two of them — Egor Dëmin (selected eighth overall by the Nets) and Nolan Traore (19th) — even got on the court while Drake Powell (22nd), Ben Saraf (26th) and Danny Wolf (27th) didn’t play.
So though there were positive signs against Charlotte from this past year’s first-round pick, Mikel Brown Jr., on Wednesday, the reward for tanking in 2024-25 has hardly paid off under head coach Jordi Fernández.
And this year, unlike the previous two seasons, the Nets are not at all trying to tank.
The roster is still a work in progress at best, with veterans such as Julius Randle — in his first year in Brooklyn — and Michael Porter Jr. mixed with unproven young players.
For the Nets to find any sustained success this season, they’ll need marked improvement from at least some of the five players picked over a year ago.
But on Wednesday at Barclays Center, only Randle and Porter managed to score in double digits while Dëmin went just 2-for-10 from the floor and Traore missed all four of his field-goal attempts.
One of the concerns surrounding Dëmin when he left BYU after one season at just 19 was his struggles from 3-point range.
He put some of those issues to rest as a rookie when he hit 38.5 percent of his 3-pointers, but he was 0-for-5 from long range Wednesday.
He also had just two assists and three turnovers, and Traore finished with no assists and turned the ball over twice.
“I’m confident that, especially these two kids, we’re going to have no problem with their playmaking, their scoring and their willingness to get better every day,” Fernández said.
Dëmin said after the game he was aware of his subpar play.
“I’m not very happy with how I ended up playing the game,’’ Dëmin said. “I started with two [made] buckets but then kind of just got slower from a standpoint of my intensity, and I’ve definitely got to bring the energy, higher energy.’’
And more production would help as well.
He finished with just four points and four rebounds in 27 minutes as a starter, and Traore had three points in 16 minutes off the bench, as the Nets hope his added muscle this season will lead to him finishing more at the basket.
“I think their intentions were great and can clean up a lot of different things, turnovers, setup, calling plays, all those things,’’ Fernández said. “But we’ll watch film with them, and we’ll make them better… One day you don’t make them, another day they go in, and you’ve just got to stay ready for the next game.”
A string of six straight games against teams expected to be Eastern Conference contenders begins Saturday in Cleveland, so the learning curve will be steep, and if the Nets’ young players don’t respond, it could be another long season in Brooklyn.
— Additional reporting by Brian Lewis