2025 NBA Draft: Could the Nets pull off a trade with the Spurs?
2025 NBA Draft: Could the Nets pull off a trade with the Spurs?
The Brooklyn Nets came away from Monday's 2025 NBA Draft Lottery with some disappointment as they were awarded with the eighth overall pick in the upcoming 2025 NBA Draft. With Brooklyn reportedly regarded as one of the teams that could be looking to trade up, there could be a team that may be looking to trade back in the Draft prior to June.
The San Antonio Spurs, who ended up with the second overall pick, are reportedly going to be "open-minded" with what they decide to do with the pick, according to ESPN's Marc J. Spears during his appearance on "NBA Today" on Tuesday. NBA insider Jake Fischer recently reported that the Nets are considered one of the teams that could be looking to trade up in the Draft, meaning that there could be a path for both teams to come to a deal.
"I'm hearing that the Spurs are gonna be open-minded, they like what's at two," Spears said while noting that the opportunity for a trade may not be intended for the Nets. "They're willing to keep at two, but if I'm the Spurs, I might be calling Boston to see what I could potentially do."
While Spears explained that the Spurs are expected to be open-minded with what they do with the second overall pick, it does sound like they could be looking for veteran players to place around Victor Wembanyama and De'Aaron Fox moving forward. For a team like Brooklyn, the teams that could be good candidates for a trade back in the Draft seem to be dwindling with teams like the Dallas Mavericks (first overall pick) and Philadelphia 76ers (third overall) reportedly preferring to stay with their picks.
Plenty of situations can change between now and when the Draft begins on June 25 so the Nets have a significant amount of time to survey the landscape for a potential trade, if that is their intention. Based on the recent reporting, however, it seems that Brooklyn may not be able to trade into the top-3 of the Draft and that could be an issue if there is a player they like that won't be around by the time they get to pick at eight.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
34 minutes ago
- USA Today
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander calls Kobe Bryant his favorite basketball player ever
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander calls Kobe Bryant his favorite basketball player ever Doing a side-by-side comparison, you can see the similarities between Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Kobe Bryant. The pump-fakes. The footwork. The mid-range infatuation. The MVP winner once dared to say Bryant was 'Michael Jordan on steroids.' You can see Gilgeous-Alexander play eerily similar to Bryant. As the Oklahoma City Thunder are in a 0-1 series deficit against the Indiana Pacers in the 2025 NBA Finals, the roster fielded trivia-like questions throughout Saturday's practice. One included Gilgeous-Alexander's admiration for Bryant. He talked about his basketball impact. While they never crossed paths when Bryant was alive until his 2020 death, he's carried his baton as the NBA's best shooting guard with three straight 30-plus point campaigns. "He is probably my favorite player of all time. Never got the chance to meet him, to answer your question," Gilgeous-Alexander said. "Not only me, kids all across the world, his influence has gone through the roof, and it's like I said, he'll be remembered forever because of the competitor and the basketball player he was. Yeah, hopefully somewhere close to that as a basketball player one day. He is a special talent, special person, and God rest his soul." Entering a must-win Game 2, Gilgeous-Alexander will likely need to replicate his 38-point Game 1 performance for the Thunder to inch closer to a championship. The Pacers have proven to be an admirable foil. They won't be a pushover like many expected before the NBA Finals started.
39 minutes ago
The Thunder have been exceptional after losses all season. The Pacers know what awaits in Game 2
OKLAHOMA CITY -- When the Oklahoma City Thunder get hit, they tend to hit back. Immediately, too. Everybody knows what probably is coming in Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night. The Thunder, down 1-0 in the series with the Indiana Pacers, will be raring to go. That's been their way all season; the Thunder are 17-2, including the NBA Cup final loss, in the next game after a defeat — with those 17 wins coming by an average of 17.5 points. The thing is, the Thunder say that's the way they play after wins as well. 'That's the trick,' coach Mark Daigneault said Saturday. 'You don't want to be reactive to the last game because then you can be too high after wins, you can be too low after losses. We just get ourselves to neutral. Understand every game is different, every game is unwritten. You go out there, the ball goes up in the air, and the team that competes better on that night wins.' As such, Oklahoma City will try to be better Sunday. And so will Indiana. There was much for both teams to clean up after Game 1. For the Pacers, it was too many turnovers. For the Thunder, it was not closing out a game that it led by 15 with less than 10 minutes remaining. 'Look, everybody's pattern after a loss is to come more aggressively. … Their whole team is going to be even more aggressive defensively,' Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. 'The challenge for us is to be able to match that.' Thunder guard and NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — who led all scorers with 38 points in Game 1, his finals debut — said he doesn't hang on to games for too long, even that one. He watches film, learns the lessons and moves on. He doesn't expect to deviate from that plan for Game 2. 'I take what I need to take from it, and we do it as a group,' Gilgeous-Alexander said. 'After that, I let it go because the lessons are learned. There's nothing else you can do.' The Pacers have an opportunity at something very rare: going up 2-0 in the finals by taking the first two games on the road. It's happened only twice in finals history: Chicago did it in 1993 against Phoenix and Houston did it in 1995 against Seattle. Both the Bulls and the Rockets went on to win the NBA title in those seasons. 'I think winning on the road is hard,' said Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton, who had the game-winning shot in Game 1 with 0.3 seconds left. 'Winning an NBA game is hard, and especially a playoff game, and let alone a finals game, right? It's not easy. You're just trying to be as present as you can.' The Thunder know their odds of winning this title take a serious dive if they lose Game 2 and head to Indianapolis trailing the series 2-0. So, technically, Sunday isn't a must-win game. There's a Game 3 on Wednesday no matter what and a Game 4 on Friday no matter what. But nobody needs to tell OKC the stakes right now. 'Game 1 was a must-win and we didn't win. Now we flip to Game 2 and it's a must-win again,' Thunder forward Chet Holmgren said. 'We've been in must-win situations in this playoff run, and honestly in the playoffs, every game feels like a must-win. You're not saving anything in the tank for any games down the line.' Assuming he scores in Game 2 — obviously, a reasonable assumption — Gilgeous-Alexander will join a new club. The MVP is just two points shy of reaching the 3,000-point mark for the season, including playoffs. (If the NBA Cup final game counted, which it doesn't, he'd already be over 3,000 for the season.) This will be the 25th time a player has scored 3,000 in a season; Gilgeous-Alexander will be the 12th person to do it. Michael Jordan did it 10 times, Wilt Chamberlain did it five times and nine other players — Bob McAdoo, Elgin Baylor, James Harden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Luka Doncic, Rick Barry and Shaquille O'Neal — did it once.
New York Times
44 minutes ago
- New York Times
Thunder need Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams to outplay their experience in NBA Finals
OKLAHOMA CITY – Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams were both drafted by the Oklahoma City Thunder during the 2022 NBA lottery. They are one year apart in age (Williams has him beat by 13 months) and are, arguably, the second- and third-most important players for their team. And neither played particularly well in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Indiana Pacers, which needs to change if the Thunder are to regain the upper hand in this series. Advertisement 'I don't think anybody played their best game,' Thunder coach Mark Daigneault countered on Saturday. Game 2 is Sunday at 8 p.m. The Thunder blew a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter Thursday and lost, 111-110, to the Pacers on Tyrese Haliburton's game-winning shot with 0.3 seconds left. Throw in the 25 turnovers Oklahoma City forced, and then realize the Thunder still lost, and yes, of course, the blame could spread far and wide. Somewhere in that expansive fault net, it's easy to spot two ugly stat lines – one from Holmgren and the other from Williams. In 23 minutes, Holmgren scored just six points and collected six rebounds. He shot 2 of 9 from the field and was the Thunder's only big on the floor at the start of the first and second halves because of a lineup change. In the end, the Pacers, a traditionally mediocre team on the glass, won the rebound battle 56-39. Williams, meanwhile, needed 19 shots to score 17 points in 36 minutes. He added six assists and four rebounds, but Pascal Siakam, the Pacers' forward opposite Williams, scored a team-high 19 points with 10 rebounds. The Siakam comparison is germane because, in 2019, Siakam was where Williams and Holmgren are now — an important role player in his third year for a team, the Toronto Raptors, in the finals. Daigneault highlighted Holmgren and Williams' lack of experience for this stage when speaking about their Game 1 struggles. 'They have carved out huge roles on our team — they are a huge reason why we're here,' Daigneault said. 'They are in an uncommon position for third-year players. These are guys that are in their third year. Usually, delivering in the finals is not on the curriculum for third-year players, you know, and they have thrust themselves into that situation, which is a credit to them. 'And now that they are here, they have to continue to do what they have done all the way through the playoffs, which is go out there, fully compete, learn the lessons, and apply it forward. And they have done a great job of that. I think you've seen that over the course of the playoffs. They haven't always played their best game, but they always get themselves ready to play the next one.' Advertisement Williams made his first All-Star and All-NBA teams this season after averaging 21.6 points with about five rebounds and five assists per game. He hasn't been as accurate a shooter in the playoffs, with dips in his field goal percentage (down from 48 percent to 44.8 percent) and his 3-point percentage (just 31.5 percent now versus 36.5 percent in the regular season). He's had a couple of real stinkers in the playoffs and has made less than 35 percent of his shots in five different games. The Thunder have lost four of them. 'I try and think of myself as somebody that's very uncommon,' Williams said Saturday after the Thunder's practice, when asked about the experience factor. 'I don't ever think that I'm in my third year because then that allows me to make excuses. I should just go out there and play. Pressure is a privilege. So I enjoy being counted on and doing that, and I just think I've been counted on since, I feel like, last year, to be totally honest, just in regard to being there for the rest of the guys. And now we're here in the finals.' Holmgren does not have nearly the on-court experience Williams has. Holmgren didn't play in his first pro season due to a foot injury suffered shortly after being drafted. He played all 82 regular-season games last year and was runner-up for NBA Rookie of the Year, but this year, he played just 32 games because of a broken pelvis suffered in November. He averaged 15 points and eight rebounds during his abbreviated 2024-25 campaign, and in the playoffs, he has given the Thunder slightly higher production in most categories. But for the first time this postseason, the Thunder didn't start fellow 7-footer Isaiah Hartenstein next to Holmgren in Game 1, opting instead to start guard Cason Wallace and slide Williams and Luguentz Dort over a spot. What ensued was arguably Holmgren's worst performance in the playoffs. 'At the end of the day, us as players, our responsibility is to be ready to execute no matter what the coaches ask us to do out there,' Holmgren said. 'In Game 1, that was to play more single big. Whether the coaches ask us to do that or ask the team to go small or ask the team to go double big, we have to be ready to do that and execute it, and that's what we have to focus on. Advertisement 'Above everything else, (I just need to worry) more about impacting the game in all of the facets and just try to let that take care of itself,' Holmgren also said. 'If you just focus on that, you're going to start putting a lot more pressure on that and you're not going to be focused on everything else that's important, too.' The Thunder are the second-youngest team to ever reach the NBA Finals, so whether it was Williams or Holmgren or someone else, Oklahoma City players who haven't been in the league long were bound to be counted on. They all play behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league MVP, who scored 38 points in Game 1 but missed a bunch of shots from close range he usually makes, including one before Haliburton's game-winner that would have put the Thunder ahead by three. When Siakam was a third-year pro winning the finals with the Raptors, he could look up to and learn from Kawhi Leonard, who had already won a championship, and Kyle Lowry, a multi-time All-Star. Siakam put up huge numbers in Toronto during the 2019 playoffs, comparable to and in some cases better than what he's done for the Pacers this spring. But Siakam has more responsibility in Indianapolis now and can speak to what Holmgren and Williams are dealing with in Oklahoma City. 'At that time, I was really — I won't want to say naive, but you go into it thinking, it's Year 3 for me, we always had good teams and we always won,' Siakam said. 'It just felt normal, like this is how it's supposed to be. That's how it felt for me at that time. I think for me now coming back, I have a little bit more appreciation for it just because of the journey and like on understanding how hard it is, and how difficult it is to get to this level and to this point.' When Daigneault made his point about Holmgren and Williams, fans should know he was responding specifically to a question about Holmgren. He added Williams to the discussion to further illustrate the responsibility the Thunder have placed on two third-year players. Diagneault finished his answer, because, again, he was supposed to be talking about Holmgren, with 'the last guy I'm worried about is Chet.' The Pacers, meanwhile, are worried about him, and about Williams, and about Gilgeous-Alexander for Game 2. Advertisement 'We don't want Shai getting 38 points if we can avoid it,' Indiana coach Rick Carlisle said. 'We have to make it hard on him. Look, everybody's pattern after a loss is to come more aggressively. So he's going to be more aggressive. Williams is going to be more aggressive. Chet is going to be more aggressive. Their whole team is going to be even more aggressive defensively. 'The challenge for us is to be able to match that.'
