Brooklyn Nets

From the ABA to Atlantic Avenue

The franchise began play in 1967 as the New Jersey Americans, a charter member of the American Basketball Association, and moved to Long Island the following year as the New York Nets. Its best ABA years belonged to Julius Erving, who led the club to championships in 1974 and 1976 — still the only titles in the organisation's history.

The 1976 ABA-NBA merger cost them both. Brooklyn's forerunners paid the New York Knicks a $4.8 million invasion fee for the right to share the market, and the bill forced them to sell Erving to Philadelphia before a single NBA game had been played. They returned to New Jersey in 1977 and stayed 35 seasons, the peak arriving with Jason Kidd running the offence: back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in 2002 and 2003, four division titles between 2002 and 2006, and two defeats on the last weekend.

The move across the East River came in 2012, into the newly built Barclays Center at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic — the first major sports franchise in the borough since the Dodgers left in 1957. Mikhail Prokhorov had taken majority control in 2010; Joseph Tsai bought the club in 2019 and still owns it. Seven numbers hang in the rafters: Drazen Petrovic's 3, Kidd's 5, Vince Carter's 15, John Williamson's 23, Bill Melchionni's 25, Erving's 32 and Buck Williams's 52.

The superteam and what it cost

Between 2019 and 2023 the Nets assembled Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden and were, briefly, the most heavily backed roster in the league. Injury, absence and friction took it apart before it produced a conference final, let alone a ring. The franchise has now completed 50 NBA seasons without a championship.

What followed was a deliberate teardown run by general manager Sean Marks: veterans converted into draft capital, cap sheet cleared, and the rebuild handed to Jordi Fernandez, hired as head coach in 2024 and now in his third season.

Five in one night

The pivot point was the 2025 draft, where Brooklyn became the first team in NBA history to make five first-round selections in a single evening: Egor Demin at No. 8 out of BYU, the French guard Nolan Traore at 19, Drake Powell of North Carolina at 22, the Israeli guard Ben Saraf at 26 and Michigan's Danny Wolf at 27.

The 2025-26 season that followed was the cost of that approach. Brooklyn finished 20-62, fifth in the Atlantic and 13th in the East, and were eliminated from play-off contention for a third straight year on 12 March after losing to Atlanta. The campaign had opened unusually, with a pair of preseason games in Macau between 4 and 12 October 2025 — the first NBA fixtures staged in China since 2019.

Individually there was more to hold on to. Michael Porter Jr., acquired the previous summer, averaged 24.2 points, 7.1 rebounds and 3.0 assists across 52 games. Demin started 45 of his 52 appearances and averaged 10.3 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.3 assists; Traore put up 8.9 points and 3.8 assists in 56 games; Noah Clowney scored 12.3 a game in 66; Powell appeared 63 times. Claxton gave them 11.7 points and 6.9 rebounds in 69 games. Cam Thomas, the team's most natural scorer, managed only 24 appearances at 15.6 points and is no longer on the roster.

What the summer of 2026 bought

Brooklyn worked the draft again in June 2026, taking the Louisville point guard Mikel Brown Jr. at No. 6, Duke's Isaiah Evans at 33 and UCLA forward Tyler Bilodeau at 43. The No. 1 pick that night went to Washington, who chose AJ Dybantsa ahead of Darryn Peterson.

Free agency was then handled in three days. On 30 June the Nets re-signed Day'Ron Sharpe and Josh Minott and added guard Keon Ellis from Cleveland; on 1 July they signed centre Moritz Wagner from Orlando. The structural move came on 10 July, a four-team trade that brought Julius Randle in from Minnesota along with the draft rights to Joshua Jefferson, sent Claxton to Chicago and shipped Evans's rights on to Minnesota. Ziaire Williams, Jalen Wilson, Ochai Agbaji and Malachi Smith also left. The net effect is a bigger, more physical front line with Randle, Porter Jr., Wagner and Sharpe, and no rim protector of Claxton's standard behind them.

Where they stand, October 2026

Media day was held on 28 September and camp opened the next morning, Fernandez and Marks beginning a third season together. Brown Jr. has been the main absentee: an ankle problem dating back to Summer League kept him out of the start of camp and ruled him out of the preseason opener alongside Jefferson, with Fernandez saying he expected the rookie to feature at some point in the preseason once the next stage of rehabilitation was cleared. Porter Jr. and Sharpe have also sat out exhibition minutes.

On the floor the signs have been encouraging in the way preseason signs usually are. Brooklyn won 124-90 at Charlotte on 6 October, a game defined by 12 steals and 25 transition points — exactly the churn Fernandez has been coaching towards — then beat Philadelphia 114-108 at Barclays Center on 8 October to go 2-0.

The market is not convinced. Brooklyn's win total for 2026-27 has been set at 24.5, a notional four-game improvement, and the Atlantic has become the hardest division in the league around them: Philadelphia added LeBron James in July, and Toronto brought Kawhi Leonard back. Fernandez's teams have won 46 games across his first two seasons. The regular season starts at home against Charlotte on 21 October.

A night in the lower bowl

Barclays Center sits at 620 Atlantic Avenue with a basketball capacity of 17,553, which makes it one of the smaller buildings in the league and a notably louder one when a game is close. Nine subway lines and the Long Island Rail Road stop underneath it at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center, which is the single biggest practical advantage it holds over any other major venue in New York. The bag limit is strict — 10 by 6 by 2 inches, with no bag check available — and the Flatbush entrance is currently closed, so section-specific entrances are worth checking in advance.

Pricing is dynamic rather than fixed, and during a rebuild the lower bowl at centre court is reachable for money that would buy a far worse seat at a Knicks game. Home dates after the opener include Indiana on 25 October, Detroit on 30 October and Orlando on 20 November in the Emirates NBA Cup, Philadelphia on 16 November, Chicago on 18 November and San Antonio on 23 December.