Nets Development Didn’t Take A Night Off In Shocking Comeback At Detroit

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If you’ve ever been in a situation destined for abject failure, such as playing or coaching a horrible sports team, you can have empathy for those going through it and understand their elation, however fleeting it may be, when they win a game that no one saw coming. Obviously, NBA players are paid handsomely for their efforts, but they are competitive human beings.

A significant subsection of Nets fans doesn’t want to hear that. They instead fret over how each of the team’s wins will affect its ultimate slot at the 2026 NBA Draft. To them, Brooklyn’s 107-105 victory at Eastern Conference leader Detroit on Saturday, during which they engineered the fifth-biggest comeback in franchise history by making up 23 points in the second half, was the worst kind of sin. It upset the tank, and their five rookies had very little to do with it.

While it’s true that Egor Demin (plantar fasciitis injury management) and Drake Powell (G-League assignment) weren’t on the court and Nolan Traore and Ben Saraf were benched for the final 20 minutes because they couldn’t handle the Pistons’ pressure, it would be inaccurate to assert that the triumph was not one for development.

I thought rookie big man Danny Wolf’s work to get the Nets into a coherent offense, while holding his own on the other end, allowed Head Coach Jordi Fernandez to play bigger against a very physical opponent that was missing All-Star guard Cade Cunningham. Wolf’s eight points and four assists without a turnover in the second half were a bonus after Traore and Saraf struggled with the simple point guard task of bringing the ball across the midcourt line.

But development isn’t only for rookies. Third-year pro Noah Clowney, who is about two months older than Wolf, stepped up a few times with aggressive takes to the hoop. Backup center Day’Ron Sharpe was a monster in the paint, outdueling Detroit’s All-Star Jalen Duren down the stretch. Somehow folks continued to give recently-waived Cam Thomas a pass for his flaws as natural growing pains, yet Sharpe, 24, was taken just two slots after Thomas in the 2021 Draft.

And then there’s reserve wing Ziaire Williams, also 24, who drained a pair of three-pointers, including the go-ahead shot with 1:12 remaining, in crunch time. Williams was one of those disregarded players I referred to in a prior post ( Brooklyn’s Distressing Development - by Steve Lichtenstein) who, in my view, hadn’t matured his game in Brooklyn’s development program to the level I—like his previous employer Memphis, which attached a second round pick in the trade with Brooklyn to get his salary off their books two summers ago--had hoped.

It’s possible I was, well, premature. Williams, of course, will have to maintain this production (18 points per game with a 48/53/95 shooting split) beyond the teensy three-game sample before anyone draws further conclusions, but there are promising indicators beyond the simple make-or-miss.

Williams’ defensive engagement is always the first thing Fernandez reviews when assessing his game; prior insufficiencies have resulted in residencies in what former NHL announcer John Davidson called Chateau Bow-Wow. A sign that Williams might have acknowledged the message: NBA.com tracked him with 13 deflections in the last three games, tied for the sixth-most in the league in that span.

Still, the main knock on Williams has always been his streaky shooting. You can’t be a 3-and-D wing without the 3. At 32% from deep on the season, he’ll need a lengthy hot stretch to get to a point where he’d be considered playable in games that matter. The good news for the long term is that his effectiveness in driving closeouts is getting better—he’s shooting 10% higher from inside eight feet and is drawing 0.5 more free throw attempts per 36 minutes than last season, per NBA.com. As his three-point efficiency improves, he’ll need to employ these finishes around the basket more often.

The Nets have at least one more season to evaluate such growth in Williams’ game as the two-year, $12.5 million contract he signed as a free agent last offseason includes a 2026-27 team option expiring June 29. Picking it up, even if it’s with the plan of trading him in a grand shopping scheme, seems like a no-brainer.

That it was Williams and Sharpe who scored ten of the Nets’ last 12 points over the final 3:30 on Saturday—as opposed to veteran Michael Porter Jr., who needed a heavy 25-shot diet to get to 30 points—can’t be a bad thing, even if Brooklyn’s 16^th win of the season tied them with Washington for third in the reverse standings. For the 748^th time, placement won’t cost this team a shot at the Darryn Peterson/AJ Dybantsa/Cam Boozer prizes. That’s entirely luck, because the odds differences in that area are so marginal, with the last two Lottery winners Atlanta and Dallas proving the randomness of one individual computer drawing. It might only cause the Nets to lose out on one or more of the Kingston Flemings/Keaton Wagler/Mikel Brown Jr. types, and no one has labeled any of them sure things. When you think of it like that, maybe this one outlier isn’t such a big deal.

By no means am I dismissing fans’ disappointments that the aforementioned rookies weren’t on the court to contribute to Saturday’s upset. Unfortunately, teenagers like Traore (and those that just turned 20 like Demin and Powell) sometimes need to take a step back before they go forward, and this segment against physical opponents was Traore’s downward portion in his learning chart. And while the timing of Powell’s demotion wasn’t ideal given Demin’s foot woes, I can see how the organization found it necessary to boost his aggressiveness/confidence with the ball in his hands.

That didn’t mean player development took a night off in Detroit.