That was a bit on the nose.
On Monday night, the Brooklyn Nets lost their first game of the post-Dennis Schröder era, following the weekend trade they made with the Golden State Warriors, wherein they received three future second-round draft picks.
Brooklyn didn’t just lose on Monday night either; they got womped. But before the score got out of hand, as the Nets held an early lead, actually, YES Network returned from the first media timeout. Viewers were treated to the following graphic…
That’s it. That’s it right there, the sum total of the Brooklyn Nets’ future, give or take some cap space, a promising rookie head coach, and a couple potential rotation players still barely in their 20s.
YES Network knows it, the fans, like it or not, know it, and not only do the Brooklyn Nets know it, they announced it to the world by trading the only competent point guard on their roster on the very first day trade-season officially commenced.
And it’s not even about those second-round picks, which are mostly just ornamental decorations to whatever foundation a team plans to build. Occasionally, you luck into Jalen Wilson, a 24-year-old 3-and-D wing who could become the seventh-best player on a playoff team. That’s a real get at #51!
Alas, the Schröder trade and the rest of Brooklyn’s season are about that little section under the recounting of 2025’s first-round draft picks that says “own.”
This past summer, Sean Marks regained control of Brooklyn’s own first-round pick in 2025 and 2026, and he didn’t do it so the Nets can take a late-lottery swing. He did it to have as great a chance as possible at a franchise-changer, and that requires being very bad, which Brooklyn looked on Monday.
“Missing him is difficult, but these are the decisions you have to make when your ultimate goal is long-term, sustainable success,” said Marks at Sunday’s practice.
Now listen. Brooklyn was not going to survive Monday’s shellacking even if Schröder was still on the roster, not against a focused, rested version of the best team in the league. Marks removed a 31-year-old point guard having the best year of his career on a 10-15 team that had given him more freedom and ball-handling opportunity than he had ever had, he didn’t dismantle a juggernaut.
The trade was more important for the message it sent, not as a basketball move. Nor did Monday’s loss matter in the standings. It was just a splash of cold water to the face.
Brooklyn raced out to a 7-0 start, but the Cavaliers ended the quarter on a 27-4 run. The game was over right then, and it signified that the fun, feisty part of Brooklyn’s season is also over. The illusion has been shattered.
Cleveland had seven double-digit scorers, building a lead as high as 37 in the second half. Evan Mobley led the way with 21 points, but former Net Caris LeVert wasn’t far behind with 19, the majority of which came in a first-half flurry of herky-jerk crossovers and step-backs that recalled simpler times. Donovan Mitchell only scored 18 points, but still packed myriad highlights into those buckets, including this thunderous dunk near the end of the first half…
Pregame, Kenny Atkinson reflected on his time as the Head Coach of the Brooklyn Nets, and the subsequent journey that’s led him to coaching the Eastern Conference’s current best team. After all, Monday marked Atkinson’s first return to Barclays Center as an opposing head coach, though he’d been back as an assistant.
We’ll have more below on his full comments, but the most foreboding of them was, “I feel like I reached kind of a maturity as a coach. And that helps in Cleveland. And we’ve got darn good players; that helps. Not saying we didn’t in Brooklyn, but in Brooklyn it was almost like, man, we are at the bottom, worst team in the league.”
Eight seasons after Atkinson’s introduction to Brooklyn, so much has changed that now nothing is different at all. The Nets are once again, intentionally, one of the worst teams in the league. They have to acquire good players, at all costs, and at least this time they have their own draft picks.
But Brooklyn doesn’t have many good players yet. Cleveland does. That was the gulf between the two teams on Monday, that’s what Brooklyn’s short- and long-term future is about, and that’s an issue far out of Head Coach Jordi Fernández’s control. No amount of slow-burning culture-building can fix that, the right attitude is just the cherry on top. You gotta get the talent in the building first, as scarred Nets fans are well aware of.
Still, Fernández wasn’t thinking about any of this after his team got shelled. Perhaps deflated by the departure of their starting point guard and veteran leader in Schröder, the team showed a rare lack of punch, and that’s what he’s fixated on postgame.
“We started the game well, then we got punched in the face, and then we didn’t have the togetherness, the fight to get back and keep punching…whoever wears our jersey will fight more than that, and if you don’t, you will not be part of this club.”
Statistically speaking, Fernández will probably be right. When the Brooklyn Nets have real winning ambitions on a night-to-night basis, very few of these players will still be here. Not even Ben Simmons, the expiring max-contract who put up 10/4/8 with six turnovers, showing some semblance of a desire to take the ball to the cup…
Nor will Cameron Johnson, Brooklyn’s leading scorer with 22 points and five assists on the night. Perhaps not even Dorian Finney-Smith and Day’Ron Sharpe, two other double-digit scorers on the losing side. This thing can get even worse.
Still, the Cleveland Cavaliers are an elite team, and for quite a few members of the organization, Monday night was a revenge game. Not every night will be a non-competitive 30-point loss that is totally unwatchable, even when some more of the aforementioned players are traded.
But some of them will be. Buckle up.
Final Score: Cleveland Cavaliers 130, Brooklyn Nets 101
Injury Report
Pregame, Jordi Fernández told reporters that news will be forthcoming on Ziaire Williams (left knee sprain) and Cam Thomas (left hamstring) this week, as both injured Nets are just about due for an update. Thomas, likely, is closer to an on-court return than Williams.
That seemed as though it’d be it for injury updates, but then Trendon Watford left Monday’s contest after scoring eight points in ten minutes with “left hamstring soreness,” per Nets PR. While no update was available after the game, Brooklyn will surely exercise caution with Watford, as that’s the same left hamstring that caused him to miss the first 13 games of the season.
Reece Beekman introduced
At halftime of Monday’s beatdown, the Nets threw together an introduction for their newest member, rookie Reece Beekman, who the team acquired from Golden State in the Dennis Schröder trade.
Beekman graduated from the University of Virginia after playing all four years of his collegiate career there, but went un-drafted this June before ultimately catching on with the Warriors. Well, so much for that.
“Yeah, it’s been a crazy, crazy turn of events,” said the 23-year-old. “You know, just for this to be my rookie year, and then not even halfway through the season, for me to get traded, it’s a little crazy. But you know, it’s life in the league.”
Beekman is on a two-way contract (which necessitated waiving the injured Yongxi Cui), so while he may not see a ton of time with the big-league ball-club just yet, he told Nets fans what they should expect from his on-court play:
“I’d just say [I’m] a defensive-minded guard. You know, I want to disrupt the game that way. Try to pick up, make the offense for them a little different, give them different looks. And then on offense, just be a playmaker. I want to get guys involved, set shots up for other people, and then when it’s my turn to be aggressive, look for my own as well.”
Kenny Atkinson’s return
Cleveland Cavaliers Head Coach Kenny Atkinson was quite the popular man at Barclays Center on Monday, saying hello to a whole host of reporters and staff that he had missed in his nearly five years away from the Brooklyn Nets organization. Granted, he’s been back before as an assistant coach for two Western Conference teams, but never as the center of attention.
“It’s always great, always great to come home,” he said pregame. “Most of my family lives here, my seven brothers live in the area. So it’s great. I love coming back here, I love the New York vibe.”
And like Atkinson does, he competed like hell for 48 minutes, even picking up a technical with his team’s lead well out of reach…
But his most interesting moments of the night came before the ball was tipped. He begrudgingly confirmed he still has a relationship with Brooklyn GM Sean Marks, despite the rocky end to his time as a Net.
“Yeah, When you’re on the NBA circuit you see people from other teams all the time. So I’ve seen him and we text back and forth. So yeah, I definitely interact with him.”
Atkinson also joked — or perhaps, half-joked — about how he feels more freedom to yell at Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen due to their time together in Brooklyn, but his most insightful response came while answering a question about how he’s matured as a coach; it very well might be relevant for Jordi Fernández, a man in a similar position to the one Atkinson was in at the start of his Brooklyn tenure.
In sum, Atkinson is no longer the type to wake up at 4 a.m. and stew over the past night’s loss while on the exercise-bike: “I wake up at ten, have a croissant and a coffee. Seriously. I’ve evolved. I think I was a little crazy back then quite honestly. I was desperate to make it, right? Desperate. I didn’t want to fail. So you know, you just really got after it. But I knew even after two years in Brooklyn, I knew it wasn’t good for my health, and that’s where talking about evolving as a coach — I delegate a lot more. I stress a lot less about the little stuff, the small stuff. Definitely, I feel like I reached a maturity as a coach.
“And that helps in Cleveland, and we’ve got darn good players; that helps. Not saying we didn’t in Brooklyn, but in Brooklyn it was almost like, ‘man, we are at the bottom, worst team in the league.’ And it was like there was a desperation to get better. So I wouldn’t change that approach for anything. That’s what that situation needed at the time. I think Cleveland needs — the Cavs need a different touch. And it kind of sets up perfectly to where I am as as a coach.”
Sounds like Kenny Atkinson and the Cleveland Cavs are enjoying life. And with the NBA’s best record, why wouldn’t they be?
Hopefully that reality isn’t too far off in Brooklyn’s future.
Next Up
Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images
The Brooklyn Nets will take on a Scottie Barnes-less Toronto Raptors team next time out, as they go north of the border for a brief, one-game roadie. Tip-off is scheduled for Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. ET.
