Within the Nets’ organization, player development is a priority. When you’re rebuilding, it has to be. That’s a given. But it’s not just about the obvious development track.
Whether a rookie or veteran enters the building, growth is prioritized — especially from within. While the focus is rightly on the Flatbush Five, the Long Island Nets, Brooklyn’s G League affiliate, is working on that and a lot more, from two-ways to fallen angels to local projects … always looking for that diamond in the rough. The G League may not produce All-Stars, but rosters are rebuilt in a lot of ways.
“We try to build all the players, of course. Priority guides the assignments in two ways, which is noted, but at the same time, we want to develop everyone,” Long Island’s head coach Mfon Udofia, told ND. “We’re not always going to have the two-way guys or assignment guys, so we want to develop all 10 players. We want to pour into these guys.”
“Once you come to Long Island, it’s a fresh start,” the head coach continued. “We don’t care what you did in the past — it’s about what’s next. We take on that challenge. We want to revive guys’ careers and help them get better. We talk about it all the time: everybody has a next level. Our job as coaches is figuring out how to help you reach that next level.”
Just ask Killian Hayes. He may not be wearing a black-and-white of the Brooklyn Nets or the red, white, and blue of Long Island but he’s doing well. Just this weekend, he got a 10-day from the Sacramento Kings after playing well this season for the Cavs affiliate. His journey through Nassau County and the borough of Brooklyn shows just how things can work out on the Island, how the underappreciated process works.
The former No. 7 overall pick endured three rocky seasons, to put it mildly, to open his NBA career. He ranked dead last in effective field goal percentage in each of his first three seasons, never getting above 42.6%, well below the league average of 54.8%. He was called the worst player in the NBA and was unceremoniously waived at the 2024 trade deadline!
By the summer of 2025, Hayes was still without a team and without a clear path forward. After failing to land an NBA opportunity, the situation took another tough turn in June when he was released from France’s national team. Then on the advice of former Nets assistant Adam Harrington, Brooklyn took a chance on him and he wound up in Long Island.
Udofia and associate head coach Shawn Swords, who lead Long Island’s development efforts, played a pivotal role in helping Hayes rebuild his confidence — particularly in embracing a leadership role, as Hayes told ND.
“My biggest thing I learned was using my voice — just being a leader to those guys… I wanted to keep improving and keep working on my skills,” said Hayes, still only 24.
Late last season, the Nets even awarded him with a 10-day deal in which he started five games and shot 38.1% from deep, a far cry from his Detroit days when he never broke 28% in a single season. Brooklyn looked like his next landing spot but once the Nets took another, even younger French point guard, Nolan Traore, in the draft, they moved on, but the foundation Hayes built in their system remains the blueprint as he continues to chase his way back to the NBA.
And he’s not the only Long Island alumnus to succeed this season at the NBA level. There’s also Drew Timme. A three-time All-American at Gonzaga, he went undrafted. By the the time he arrived in Long Island last year from the Stockton Kings, the result of a G League trade, his NBA prospects looked meager. He was averaging 11.9 points and shooting 12.5% from deep. Things changed at Nassau Coliseum.
After making the All-G League team and averaging 23.9 points and 10.3 with Long Island, he like Hayes was also called up at the end of the season and averaged 12 and 7 for Brooklyn. He even got an invitation to training camp but ultimately got cut by the big club. Like Hayes, his Nets career ended with the 2025 Draft and Brooklyn’s extreme youth movement. He’s five years younger than Danny Wolf, just as Traore is five years younger than Traore. On the rebuilding Nets, youth must be served.
So, Long Island traded Timme’s G League rights to the South Bay Lakers. He eventually secured a two-way deal with L.A., and last month, he started and scored 21 points in a Lakers win.
This year, things continue along that same path. Unlike 2o24-25 when Hayes and Timme got their chance and the Nets had no draft picks to develop, this season is quite different from a development perspective. Early in the season, four of the five first rounders — everyone but lottery pick Egor Demin — had spent time on Long Island each with a plan fashioned by the combined development staffs to improve certain skills.
But they still have kept to their plan of developing everyone. Two of the best examples may be Nate Williams, a 6’6” wing who just turned 27, and Grant Nelson, an athletic 7-footer who was undrafted by choice, then signed with the Nets, conscious of their development successes.
Before being traded to Long Island by the Lakers organization at the head of the 2025 season, Williams appeared in 47 NBA games, mostly with the Houston Rockets. The U. of Buffalo product used the opportunity to reestablish his value..
In 22 games, he averaged 17.9 points in 34.8 minutes per contest, exploding for 23.2 in last five. The strong G League showing ultimately earned Williams another chance at the NBA opportunity, securing a two-way contract with the Golden State Warriors — yet another example of how Long Island has helped players revive their careers and return to NBA rosters.
Nelson on the other hand is a bit of a non-traditional G League success. Hyper-athletic — he set the all-time NBA Combine record for lane agility at 7-foot — he reportedly passed on being taken in the second round last June so he could sign an Exhibit 10 contract with Brooklyn, his agent citing the Nets coaching staff. He played both in the Summer League and preseason for the Nets, but didn’t impress that much. One reason: a balky knee that had bothered him since his freshman year at North Dakota State back in 2020.
So the Nets pulled him from the active roster and put him on a seven-week rehab course to see if he could finally get his long-time knee soreness resolved. So far so good. Although he’s still on minutes restriction, Nelson’s numbers are looking good.
In his 14 starts since returning from rehab, he’s played 288 minutes or 20.6 per game. On a per-36 basis, he’s averaged 24.2 points and 11.6 rebounds while shooting better than 60% from the floor. His only issues, a need to bulk up and refine his 3-point shooting. He’s 23. More importantly, his knee soreness has been resolved and he credits the Nets performance staffs.
“I think it really shows how good the performance staff is here,” Nelson told ND. “And what they’ve done to get me back on the court and be ready for when I get back on the court.
“I’ve been dealing with knee soreness for I don’t know how many years, really, since I started college,” Nelson explained to ND. “It was kind of just affecting how I was playing, and I just had to get it over with and get all the rehab done. Get it back to where it was, feeling 100%. The performance staff did a great job, and everyone really cares about me, which really meant a lot.”
Bottom line for Nelson: “Yeah, they [Long Island] really emphasize a relationship with their players, and that helps a lot,” he said.
What’s the value of all this if Long Island players like Hayes, Timme and Williams move on? Even if one player hits, becomes a rotation player, it’s a bonus. The value is also reputational as agent B.J. Bass of RBA Showcase told NetsDaily. Bass reps Williams as well as Tyson Etienne, one of the Nets two-ways, and Long Island point guard Terry Roberts.
“It’s great. It’s first class. It’s all about the people. and the people who run the Nets front office are all good guys,” Bass told ND, noting how the organization, unlike others, compete every night.
“One thing they do here on Long Island, they’re very competitive. They play together and they play to win. A lot of the other G League situations, you can see guys are out there for themselves. It’s not really a winning environment and its not really conducive to what you’re trying to do at the next level.”
As a league decision maker told ND recently when talking about one of the players the Nets recently acquired: “He has a chance with the Nets development staff.”
This year, at least, the focus is strongly on the Flatbush Five + One: the organization has five rookies and three players on two-way contracts. They continue to prioritize development, shuffling all but Egor Demin, their first lottery pick in 15 years, back and forth between the HSS Training Center in Industry City and the Yes, We Can Center in Westbury, where Long Island practices.
So far, Brooklyn has assigned Nolan Traore, Drake Powell, Ben Saraf, and Danny Wolf to a grand total of 42 games. Saraf, who’s still with Long Island, is the current leader with 19 games. Traore has played 14 games and, so far, appears to be the most successful graduate.
“My shot, getting rhythm and confidence so I could come back here and do the same thing. Getting a lot of reps changes everything,” Traore told ND regarding his mindset when playing in the G-League.
His success and positive outlook on Long Island caught the attention of head coach Jordi Fernández.
“He took full advantage of the opportunities he had with Long Island,” said Jordi Fernández. “And when he came back here, he did so with a different spirit and a lot more confidence.”
There’s another value in mixing the draft picks with players who are trying to get back to the “L,” Udofia told NetsDaily.
“Guys who have been here before can show those rookies the ropes. We can put them in the game at the same time, and they can play together as well,” said Udofia now in his fourth year of balancing it all. They also get a promise, he said, that fresh start and a real chance to grow.
It’s fair to say that the best development in Long Island, at least from an organization viewpoint, has been the young players, the rookies or second year players. Nic Claxton, Day’Ron Sharpe, Noah Clowney, Jalen Wilson, even Cam Thomas on a short stint his rookie year, all got better. None were drafted before No. 20. On the current roster, there’s no diamond in the rough although Josh Minott, who the Nets traded for at the deadline and assigned to Long Island, could fill that description . Tyrese Martin did qualify but he’s moved on. Same with Keon Johnson. And of course, there are players who didn’t work out, first rounder Dariq Whitehead being the most prominent.
The big test of the strategy is the current one with the rookies. They may not want to make the 20-mile jaunt from Barclays Center, bright lights, big city to the aging Nassau Coliseum and sea of empty parking lots, but when you have so many young players, it is what it is.
At the Nets traditional press conference following the NBA Draft back in July, Marks spoke about the plan.
“I think the proof’s in the pudding,” he argued. “When we’ve looked back and seen some of our guys over the last few years who have developed and spent a lot of time in Long Island and then all of the sudden come up to Brooklyn and next thing you know they’re starting for us or playing meaningful minutes in Brooklyn, you can see there’s a development path and a development track there.”
For everyone.
