Brooklyn Nets 2026-2027 roster deep dive: a young core builds around Michael Porter Jr. and Julius Randle

Brooklyn's roster for 2026-2027, as listed on RealGM's team page, tells the story of a franchise mixing established scorers with a wave of young talent it accumulated over the past two draft cycles. Michael Porter Jr. and Julius Randle headline the frontcourt, while Nolan Traore, Egor Demin, Drake Powell, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf — all drafted in 2025 — move into more prominent roles. Nic Claxton, Brooklyn's starting center for most of last season, is gone, sent to the Chicago Bulls in a three-team trade. Jordi Fernandez remains in charge on the bench, tasked with blending veterans and rookies into a functional rotation.

A 2025-2026 season that exposed both talent and turnover

Last season's numbers, pulled from Brooklyn's full 2025-2026 roster of 23 players, show why the front office pushed for change. Michael Porter Jr. was the clear centerpiece, starting 52 of his 54 games and averaging 23.3 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.0 assists on 46.4% shooting from the field and 36.4% from 3-point range.

Nic Claxton anchored the middle, starting 68 of 73 games with 11.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 3.5 assists while shooting 57.2% overall. Noah Clowney developed into a regular starter as well, appearing in 67 games with 60 starts for 12.1 points and 4.1 rebounds.

Cam Thomas, meanwhile, played just 27 games and posted 13.9 points on 39.9% shooting. He no longer appears on RealGM's 2026-2027 roster listing, and no source consulted spells out the exact date or terms of his exit — only that he is not part of the team heading into the new season. Day'Ron Sharpe stayed productive in a bench role, averaging 8.6 points and 6.5 rebounds while shooting 60.3% in 63 games. That mix of a proven scorer in Porter, center minutes split between Claxton and Sharpe, and a deep but unpolished young group set up the moves that followed.

Randle and Wagner arrive as Claxton departs to Chicago

The most significant shift up front is personnel, not just performance. Julius Randle joins Brooklyn for his 12th NBA season, having entered the league as the No. 7 pick of the 2014 draft out of Kentucky. Moe Wagner arrives for his 8th season, originally a 2018 first-round selection out of Michigan. Both slot into a frontcourt that no longer includes Nic Claxton, who was traded to the Chicago Bulls as part of a three-team deal, according to a report relayed by ESPN.

Keon Ellis also joins the roster, entering his 4th NBA season after going undrafted out of Alabama in 2022. His addition gives Fernandez another wing option to pair with the incoming rookies. Randle, Wagner and Ellis are now part of Brooklyn's roster, while Claxton and Cam Thomas are not.

Five 2025 first-rounders now entering year two

The heart of Brooklyn's long-term build remains its 2025 draft haul. General manager Sean Marks used what ESPN described as "his stockpile of a historic five first-round picks in 2025" to land Egor Demin, Nolan Traore, Drake Powell, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf in a single class. All five return for 2026-2027 after rookie seasons that varied in polish but showed real minutes and real responsibility.

Demin started 45 of his 54 games and averaged 9.9 points and 3.2 assists while shooting 38.5% from 3-point range.

Traore started 31 games, contributing 8.0 points and a team-high-among-rookies 3.5 assists. Wolf averaged 8.2 points and 4.5 rebounds in 62 games.

Saraf added 6.9 points and 3.0 assists across 11 starts in 48 games, and Powell chipped in 5.9 points across 69 appearances. None of the five were finished products as rookies, but the volume of playing time — two of them topped 60 games — gives Fernandez a full season of data to build his rotation decisions around this fall.

The 2026 draft class and Jordi Fernandez's projected lineup

Brooklyn added to that young core again in the 2026 draft, bringing in Mikel Brown Jr. at No. 6 overall out of Louisville, Joshua Jefferson at No. 28 out of Iowa State, and Tyler Bilodeau in the second round out of UCLA. None profiles as an immediate starter, but all three give Fernandez more depth to work into games as the season unfolds.

RealGM's own depth-chart projection — not a team announcement — has Demin, Terance Mann, Porter, Randle and Sharpe as the starting five, with Traore, Powell, Ellis, Clowney, Wagner, Saraf, Wolf and Josh Minott forming the rotation. Brown, Bilodeau, Chaney Johnson, Jefferson and Grant Nelson round out the roster in limited roles. Jordi Fernandez, confirmed as head coach on both the NBA's official team page and Wikipedia's season entry, is the one holding all of it together.

How quickly Fernandez blends five second-year players with Randle and Wagner will shape whether Brooklyn's rebuild accelerates or stays patient through the opening months of 2026-2027.

Jordi Fernandez faces his biggest test yet in year three

Jordi Fernandez enters his third season as Brooklyn's head coach in 2026-2027, and according to Yahoo Sports, republishing a Brooklyn Nets On SI feature, he "has impressed with his performance across his first two seasons as the top guy on an NBA bench." That track record was built almost entirely inside a rebuild, with the same outlet describing Brooklyn as a franchise "effectively being forced to tank over the past couple of years" — a stretch that included last season's 20-win team, the same group that produced most of the young core now expected to develop under Fernandez.

The stakes shift now. Yahoo Sports frames Julius Randle's move to Brooklyn as a "midseason addition" alongside Mikel Brown Jr., giving the Nets, per the same piece, more potential star power and better depth. Under that framing, the arrival of established scorers changes what's being asked of Fernandez: instead of managing losses for lottery odds, he now has to balance real development with real competition.

Whether Brooklyn contends for a playoff spot may come down less to Randle and Porter than to the players around them. The same Yahoo Sports piece states the Nets' "hopes of making the postseason will almost certainly rely upon the ability of the young core to contribute to winning basketball," while adding it "would obviously be helpful if Randle or Michael Porter Jr. could be All-Star-level players next season and take some of the burden off the young guys." If Fernandez manages to pull all of it together — the veterans, the rookies and everyone drafted in between — the outlet suggests "he could easily be in the Coach of the Year race."

Looking ahead: competing for attention in a Knicks-dominated New York

Brooklyn's on-court rebuild is only part of the challenge. The Nets share the New York market with the Knicks, whose continued prominence in the city keeps the competitive spotlight elsewhere. That reality raises the bar for what Brooklyn needs to show just to register with local attention, let alone compete for playoff position.

A young core still finding its footing, a coach searching for the right rotation, and two new veterans in Randle and Wagner won't be enough on their own to change that dynamic overnight. But if Fernandez's group takes the steps Yahoo Sports outlines — steady progress from the second-year players, All-Star-level lifts from Randle or Porter — Brooklyn could start building a case for relevance in a city currently defined by its other team.