Nets Should Lean Even More Into Youth During Season’s Final Week

Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

The Nets’ 19-0 run to close Saturday night’s 10-point victory over a depleted Detroit squad that shouldn’t have been able to give Brooklyn a competitive game in the first place was less notable than who was and who wasn’t on the court during that period.

Nets Head Coach Kevin Ollie went with point guard Dennis Schroder, 30, and four players aged 24-and-under. Among those relegated to observer status were starters Mikal Bridges and Dorain Finney-Smith, who joined injured veterans Cam Johnson, Ben Simmons, and Dennis Smith Jr on Brooklyn’s bench.

One would expect center Nic Claxton and guard Cam Thomas to anchor a Nets closing lineup as their experience belies their youth. But Noah Clowney? Jalen Wilson? Over Bridges and Finney-Smith?

With the Nets (31-47) mathematically eliminated from postseason eligibility, why not? And when the G-League Long Island Nets conclude their playoff run (they face the Maine Celtics on Sunday in the Eastern Conference Final), let’s see what two-way players Keon Johnson, Jacob Gilyard, and Jaylen Martin have learned on the farm.

If it’s anything close to the leap Clowney has taken since he was selected with the No. 21 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, Long Island HC Mfon Udofia should be elevated on every NBA organization’s short list when it comes to filling out their coaching staffs for 2024-25.

For Clowney, still just 19, saved Brooklyn’s bacon for a second straight game, including Wednesday night’s upset over visiting Indiana. In 41 combined minutes, he tallied 39 points, 16 rebounds, and 5 blocks, four of which came in Saturday’s second half as the Nets rallied from a 17-point hole. Since he was nudged into Ollie’s rotation on March 25, Clowney has knocked down 7-of-14 three-point attempts, providing the floor spacing that had been absent from many games this season.

Defensively, Clowney has taken to Brooklyn’s switching scheme—even when it appears he’s been beaten off the dribble, his makeup quickness has been eye-opening. It’s why his defensive impact as measured by opponents’ field goal percentage near the basket has been 14 percentage points lower than those shooters’ normal averages from that distance, the 10^th best difference among the 72 defenders who have been tested at least 30 times over the last seven games, per NBA.com (*-Small sample size disclaimer).

More than half of Clowney’s 125 minutes during these seven games have come with either Claxton or backup center Day’Ron Sharpe sharing the court, allowing Clowney to ease into things as a 4. Whereas Brooklyn has outscored the opposition by an aggregate 45 points during those 71 minutes, the team hasn’t been successful in smaller lineups with Clowney at the 5.

Which is fine, because it was always assumed that Clowney was going to need this summer to hit the gym so he could better engage in the interior battles. Still, his feel for the game on both ends is far more advanced than I had expected, which suggests that the Nets should (carefully) scale his minutes up over these otherwise meaningless final four regular season games, even if it comes at the expense of more established guys.

For instance, Cam Johnson, with his various maladies (it’s a toe sprain now; three weeks ago it was an ankle sprain), should be shut down for the season along with Smith and his problematic hip. Finney-Smith, whose struggles on Saturday (2 points on 1-for-5 shooting with 3 turnovers) might be attributed to nerves from playing in front of his previously incarcerated father for the first time in his life, has been dealing for some time with an ankle injury that reportedly required an injection. As important as he is to Brooklyn’s defense, it might be best for the team in the long run if they give him a head start on the healing.

No one needs a break more than Bridges, but I doubt he’s going to halt his consecutive games streak that stands at 509 (including playoffs) of his own volition. Still, there’s no reason for Ollie to continue to run Bridges the 35 minutes per game he’s been averaging this season, not when there is an opportunity for the Nets to further evaluate Wilson, Keon Johnson, and Martin, among others at the position. It’s too bad Dariq Whitehead, who was selected after Clowney with Brooklyn’s second of back-to-back first-round picks, is out for the season with a shin injury. He’s also only 19.  

Wilson, a 2023 second-round pick who started the season on a two-way deal and had his contract converted on March 1, hasn’t seen G-League action in two months. He worked his way onto Brooklyn’s active list through hustle plays and hot three-point shooting. Though his efficiency has severely regressed to his mean, it’s still hovering around the league average of about 35.6%. He buried a dagger to put the Pistons down by 8 points with about 40 seconds remaining on Saturday. And in Wednesday’s end game, Olie had him on the floor over Finney-Smith so Wilson could knock down a pair of clutch free throws with 7 seconds remaining to squash any hope of a Pacers miracle.   

I’m not expecting similar results from the Nets’ two-way players—Gilyard, at 5-foot 8, looked too small to compete at this level during his prior two games for Brooklyn; and Martin, who came to Long Island with a rep for three-point efficiency, misfired on 27-of-29 attempts from deep before scoring 21 points in the Conference semifinal win over the Osceola Magic. Johnson, a springy wing who has 81 games of NBA experience but is only 22, might show out more after a season in which he was Long Island’s leading scorer (not counting Wilson’s 11 games) with a 48/38/80 shooting split.  

Ollie is going to need Schroder to organize things on the court and Bridges to get his courtesy minutes, but he could easily construct a rotation with no one else older than the 24-year old Claxton as the Net play out the string. Remember: Trendon Watford is 23, five days younger than Wilson.

But let’s be clear about something: Playing the young guys now is different from an unsustainable blueprint for which some advocate whereby Brooklyn tears everything down and goes with such a rotation over the course of a full season. During Saturday’s broadcast, YES Network analyst Richard Jefferson asked, “Why hasn’t (Clowney) been on this team all year long?” On the surface, it seems like a fair question, and an argument for fans of the blow it all up model.

I can tell him why: Because the Nets organization determined he wasn’t ready then. Who knows what his development curve would have looked like if he was thrown to the wolves from the Opening Night tip-off? Maybe he wouldn’t be as confident as he seems to be now.   

And not every opponent will be the equivalent of the league-worst Pistons, who entered Barclays Center on Saturday without the services of about a half dozen of their top players, including injured future star Cade Cunningham, and on a back-to-back. That it took the Nets a full 48 minutes to vanquish such a club doesn’t speak well for anyone associated with this performance. I can guarantee you that Sacramento will provide a much stiffer challenge on Sunday in Brooklyn.

As such, no one should be rushing to sign up for a 20-win season, which is what you’d get from a complete teardown. It’s hell and just not necessary. Totally different from a week of compiling data on where the Nets’ young players stand.