NetsDaily Off-Season Report – No. 24

The offseason ends Sunday. Monday is Media Day, the beginning of pre-season. Hurrah!

A week later, after six practice sessions at HSS Training Center, the 20 players — 15 on standard deals, three on two-ways and as of now two on Exhibit 10s — will fly to Charlotte for their first pre-season game vs. the Hornets on October 8, a week. Three more preseason games, starting with a home game vs. the 76ers at Barclays Center two days later on October 8, will follow, giving fans their first look at the Nets newest era.

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The regular season starts October 21 in Brooklyn, also vs. Charlotte, in the friendly confines of Barclays Center. Then, it’s really on through Sunday, April 11, vs. the Raptors. Hopefully, it will mean something.

So, the wait is over, the truth will soon be told. Here comes both the excitement of a new season with its new hope … and more than a little anxiety, too.

The offseason was a disappointment for some fans who had hoped the Nets would make a big move or two, using all that cap space, all those draft picks to move beyond the hurt of the tank. What made it worse was the first event of the off-season, the NBA Draft Lottery in Chicago. The Nets’ whole rationale for losing all but 46 games the last two years: getting top lottery picks, didn’t work out the way they planned. After finishing with the sixth worst record and winding up with the eighth pick in 2025, they dropped again last June, picking at No. 6 in what was then seen as a four-star draft. The Nets had hoped that by finishing with 20 wins, third worst in the league, they’d finish higher. Didn’t the basketball gods understand they were owed?!?

Instead of making incremental moves, Sean Marks & co. stuck to their mantra that the team would not expend all those precious assets for anything less that a player who would “absolutely and automatically change the trajectory of the franchise”, aka a superstar. Call it the Marks Doctrine if you want. Just before the Draft, as he does virtually every year Marks made what was the biggest move of the off-season: acquiring Julius Randle, a power forward — emphasis on the power — and…

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Publish date : 2026-09-27 23:56:00

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