NetsDaily Off-Season Report – No. 22

It’s not quite over. It isn’t over till it’s over, as Yogi Berra once said, and Media Day is 10:00 a.m. ET at HSS Training Center . That’s when the Brooklyn Nets off-season will be over. So this is the final edition of this feature. We thank the basketball gods for that if not for the results. It’ll be a while before we know just how good or bad they are, no matter what pundits say.

So where do things stand? After waiving Yuri Collins, the G League assist leader last year on Sunday, the Nets roster stands at 20 players, one short of the maximum allowed for the start of training camp which coincides with Media Day. We expect to see Brooklyn sign Fanbo Zeng. the 6’11” Chinese small forward, to an Exhibit 10 deal (not a two-way) which will bring the number to the maximum. And that will be it for now: 19 standard deals of various types and lengths and two two-ways.

There are a couple of housekeeping, items, however. Ricky Council IV, who reports had the Nets signing, will not be joining the team, according to a league source. A second league source says the former Sixer is injured. That’s one fewer wing on a wing-heavy team. Where he’s headed is uncertain. Also, 6’11” Alabama big Grant Nelson won’t be signed before camp but there’s a chance he might during camp. Nelson had been rumored to be an Exhibit 10.

Brooklyn like other teams will have to get down to 18 — 15 standards and three two-ways — by October 21. In the meantime, it’s 21 with no restrictions on the breakdown.

As for the roster math, it will work like this after the Fanbo signing:

Only seven of the 21 are 25 or older 25 while three remain teenagers. Not a roster to scare the Thunder, but perhaps the youngest roster in NBA history and one that could make a strong play for a top pick at the Draft.

JfromBK, the Nets (annoying) superfan and bane of the front office, asked Jordi Fernandez for his opinion on how many games the Nets will win this season . It went as well as you’d expect…

Yes, they are still a bit over the salary cap floor — about $2 million — but they have until October 21 to finalize the roster and get to the floor. Brooklyn intends to get right up to the floor — 90% of the cap — and not one penny more — to avoid CBA sanctions. That will give them about $15.5 million to take into the season and likely right up to the February trade deadline. That should be enough to have more cap space at the deadline than any other NBA club. While $15 million is not $60 million, it should be able to help Nets facilitate some deals at the deadline when fewer big deals take place.

So since the end of 2024-25 season, the Nets have picked up 11 new players, including six rookies and moved or didn’t renew seven, the most significant being Cam Johnson and D’Angelo Russell.

How’d they do? That’s currently TBA although the general consensus around the league would tell you not as well as some, including fans, expected. The argument is they could have gotten more for their assets and wealth of cap space. They also think the Nets shouldn’t have used all five of their firsts and for the most part don’t like the individual picks either, noting that with the exception of Danny Wolf all were taken higher, in a couple of places much higher than projected by mock draft. And they point out, the Nets didn’t add any first rounders in 2026.

Bill Simmons called the Denver Nuggets trade “one of the worst trades of the decade, ”but on the other hand, one of his employees at The Ringer, Michael Pina, called the Nets summer “rational if not shrewd” and John Hollinger of the Athletic called the Denver trade “beautiful” for the Nets. A high-ranking source we trust told ND that he has high hopes in particular for Egor Demin and Drake Powell, suggesting both could be very good NBA players.

Who knows at this point. None of the punditry will matter soon enough. It’s why they play the games. By the time of the opener vs. the Cavaliers on October, we’ll have all of our ND staffers look at the final roster and assign grades. Till then, we are all that we have.

Congratulations to Forrest Weber!

We started watching the new Netflix drama, “Black Rabbit,” starring Jude Law and Jason Bateman, the other night for a couple of reasons.

We needed a new series to binge and Irina Pavlova, former CEO of ONEXIM Sports & Entertainment, Michael Prokhorov’s parent company, tweeted out an intriguing Nets connection…

The clip Pavlova referenced showed Jake Friedken, the Jude Law character explaining to his son, adorned in a KD jersey, the difference between his dad,, and his uncle, Jake’s brother Vince. Jake, a successful restauranteur, broke it down by noting their fandom. Vince, a degenerate gambler and loser, was a Knicks fan while they “love the Nets.”

But that wasn’t the only connection. Vince has literally bet his life on the Knicks, losing hundreds of thousands on the denizens of MSG. At one point, Jake confronts Vince that goes something like this:

JAKE: “You bet Mom’s money on the KNICKS?!?”

VINCE: “F*cking Julius Randle.”

Yes, we laughed. And that brings us to Forrest Weber, a long time (11 years) member of the Nets’ equipment staff, working behind the scenes at Barclays as he rose through his acting career which has now hit new heights. Here’s an IG post from a couple of years ago on how much he loves working for the Nets…

Weber plays “Junior”, the son of a local mob boss and one of the two enforcers following, threatening and demanding by less than half-measures, the $140,000 Vince still owes on his Knicks wagers. He’s the younger of the two enforcers you see in the series trailer following Bateman .

We’re not TV critics, but we found Weber’s portrayal quite convincing. A scene where Junior asks his deaf mob boss father’s permission to kill Vince, using sign language, is quite riveting.

So congratulations to Weber. Now we have to wonder if he’ll be seated on celebrity row the next time we see him at Barclays.

Final Note

Thanks for reading another year of the Off-Season Report, our 18th. We hope you found it as convincing at Forrest Weber’s performance.

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