First things first. The speculation about the Brooklyn Nets working a deal for the overall No. 2 pick on June 25 is just that, speculation. It’s not some rumor based on what’s been heard around the league. No, it’s driven by various pundits who think Sean Marks & co. will try to reverse their disappointment after the NBA Lottery and go for broke, combining assets — picks and/or Cam Johnson — to pull Dylan Harper away from the Spurs.
Indeed, the only real report, only real rumor goes in the other direction. As Marc Stein of The SteinLine substack reported.
San Antonio has likewise attempted to convey a desire to rival teams that it intends to keep the No. 2 overall pick in next month’s draft to select Rutgers’ Dylan Harper.
Maybe it will happen, but according to people we’ve spoken with, it is somewhere between unlikely and very unlikely. Said one league source, “I don’t see how they can get to No. 2,” he said, citing the lack of assets to make that big of a move.
Obviously, there are a lot of creative people in NBA front offices, but getting to the overall No. 2 in a generational draft is literally a stretch. Sure it’s happened but it’s unlikely that the 76ers think trading Markelle Fultz for Jayson Tatum was smart. Same to a lesser degree, the Hawks would rethink Trae Young for Luka Doncic if given the chance.
The same source said the Nets are likely to get a “good player” at No. 8 if they keep it. Indeed, the Nos. 8 and 19 picks, if they keep them, will be the highest and second highest picks the franchise has made since they practiced at what is now the Meadowlands YMCA. As for the remaining picks, he like virtually everyone outside the eighth floor of 168 39th Street in Sunset Park doubts the Nets will use all four first rounders, at Nos. 8, 19, 27 and 28 as well as the second rounder at No. 36.
“It is impossible to house four rookies on the roster,” he said, citing the development issues with so many young players. “All those picks don’t look good when they are 26th and 27 picks.”
So he expects the Nets to make moves with their firsts, but not as dramatic as those proposed by pundits. As we’ve noted, if history is any guide, we won’t know till much closer to the draft still a month away. Remain calm.
It’s going to be a long off-season with some dates known, like the Draft on June 25-26. Then, in rapid order, there are deadlines for player options, qualifying offers, tender of offer sheets, free agency, etc., all within a week. There will be a lot of speculation along the way.
The best guide to viewing any speculation is that the rebuild has at least another year to run, maybe more. There’s no great urgency we’ve detected, no panic. Remember what B.J. Johnson, the assistant GM, said in the first and so far only edition of SCOUT:
“We don’t look at this as just a one time thing, this could set us up for the next five, 10 years of our organization,” said Johnson in a scouts’ meeting in September 2024 . “So to me, personally, we get these next three yearsright, we’re in a really good position.” (Emphasis ours.)
That comment, apparently referring to the current front office team suggests the rebuild is going to take another two years, much like Marks first rebuild which had two lean years followed a more promising third year, then the Clean Sweep that summer. Separately, we’ve been told that that the three-year window starting a year ago is the timetable.
No two rebuilds are going to be identical, even with the same people in charge. The Nets entered this one with far more assets than they did when Marks et al were hired in 2016. They have the league’s most draft picks when nine years ago, they had none, literally, in the first three years. They also have experience, good and bad. But some things remain the same. They’re still in New York, still have a mega-wealthy ownership group willing to spend.
Yes, things can change like they did sometime last spring when ownership and management agreed to rebuild and made those two trades on January 25. As of now, though, it’s stay the course.
Ellie revealed ... sort of.
Ellie is everywhere. The New York Liberty mascot is currently starring in a State Farm Insurance commercial ...
...and soon will be teaming up with the Liberty Mutual emu as part of a new marketing deal that makes specific mention of her value. She has nearly 200,000 TikTok followers, more than 150,00 on Instagram, has represented Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty and luxury brand Off-White and is the first celebrity spokesperson for nail-polish company Essie.
She even received an (oversized) championship ring on May 17 at the Liberty’s championship celebration.
And this week, Ellie the Elephant was featured in the august pages of the Wall Street Journal which did a business profile.
The WSJ’s Rory Satran revealed among other things that the proud performer in the pachyderm suit, anonymous since she arrived on the scene at Barclays Center in 2021, is a 5’10” Brooklyn native who wears custom size-12 Nike Sabrina 2 “By Big Ellie” sneakers, has a background in dance and, is the sole inhabitant of the suit in question since Day 1. And so far, neither her name nor her face has been revealed.
“The Liberty has taken the idea of mascots and elevated it to the next level,” Alexy Posner, the founder of athlete and talent management firm AP Group, told Satran.
Indeed, Ellie is not a mascot so much as an influencer and her followers a herd... with a love of fashion and style. Per Satran:
And they’re buying Ellie merchandise. Last season, the Liberty sold out of Ellie stuffed animals on opening night. This season, New York Liberty chief executive officer Keia Clarke said they had ordered 10 times more of them, which she called “unheard of in merchandising.” Fans also buy clip-on versions of Ellie’s long braid, and on June 1, they will be able to buy a version of her “Hersey” (a portmanteau of “her” and “jersey”) dress.
It’s not as if the Liberty is going over old territory. Ellie, as a woman representing a woman’s team, dressed in fashionable clothes, is a new phenomenon, as Satran also notes in the Journal. It has also had its challenges.
When Essie first had the idea to work with the New York Liberty and Ellie to promote its nail products, there was one crucial challenge.
“Ellie didn’t even have nails, but we knew that she was so relevant,” said Zoe Housman, the VP head of marketing & strategic projects at L’Oreal. So Ellie’s mascot builder got to work and a nailfluencer was born. Ellie showed off her new nails in social-media videos.
Housman reported that engagement rates were up over 200% on Instagram and 57% on TikTok, and sales on the gel products increased 15% after the Ellie campaign.
Bottom line: BSE Global knows marketing, whether it’s an anthropomorphic elephant strutting the sidelines at a women’s basketball game or a campaign to build a Nets fanbase in French-speaking in Montreal. It all seems unlikely until it works.
“You would think that it would be a natural part of a women’s sports organization,” Keia Clarke, CEO of the Liberty, told WSJ. “We’re happy to be leading this conversation.”
Indeed, it should be noted that Ellie is trademarked by the Tsais’ parent company and the anonymous performer is an employee, not a contractor or free agent. She gets compensated separately for her time spent working on brand deal but the Liberty reaps the big benefits.
Will the Nets follow suit and get a mascot of their own, sans the handbags? No one is saying, maybe because matching Ellie would be pretty hard.
China approaches
The Nets preseason trip to Macao, the Las Vegas of southern China, is looking good. Geopolitical tensions seem to have relaxed a big between the U.S. and China and neither country has been above using sports as a way to signal flexibility in their relations.
The games, at the Venetian Hotel with its 14,000 capacity, will open the Nets preseason and if what our special correspondent (who was at the D’Angelo Russell’s promotional event in Beijing earlier in the week) sent us some pictures this weekend of just how big the NBA China Games will be. Promotions are everywhere.
On city buses…
Next to city landmarks…
And soon at a new NBA store ...
This is of course a big deal for the NBA. For the first time since 2019, the ill-fated Lakers-Nets visit, the league is back in the People’s Republic, in part because of Joe Tsai’s efforts. It’s also a big deal for the Brooklyn Nets who are making their record-setting third trip to China, breaking a tie with the Lakers having played in Beijing and Guangzhou in 2010, then Shenzen and Shanghai in 2019 and now two games in Macao. It is also the ninth international trip the Nets have made since 1996.
Besides the three trips to China, the Nets have also played games in France, England, Mexico, Italy, Israel and Canada and practiced once in Russia. They were even the first NBA team to make a round-the-world trip back in 2010 with stops in Moscow, Shanghai and Guangzhou before returning across the Pacific to Brooklyn. Also, a lot of international teams over the years have visited Barclays Center in preseason, from Turkey to Israel to Brazil.
Did we mention that BSE Global knows how to market their brands?
In another China note, Jacky Cui, who played for the Nets under a two-way deal last season before tearing his ACL in December, will be a game analyst during the NBA Finals for TenCent, who holds Chinese TV and streaming rights for the NBA.
That likely means that Cui, who is still rehabbing his ACL in New York, will be the most heard analyst on TV worldwide during the Finals ... speaking Chinese. You never know where the NBA will take you.
Draft Sleeper of the Week
Until we hear differently, we’ll keep highlighting draft prospects who could fall to the Nets at any one of their four picks. So, in that spirit, we are taking a look at Maxime Raynaud, the 22-year-old 7’1” Stanford center from Paris who Tankathon has the Nets taking him at No. 27.
Raynaud was one of the big winners at the NBA Combine in Chicago, ESPN reports. He had a good rep coming in after averaging 20.6 points and 10.2 rebounds on 47/35/77.
Wrote Jonathan Givony last week:
Raynaud was one of the big winners at the combine, being arguably the most impressive performer of the scrimmages, after measuring over 7 feet barefoot with a huge 9-2 standing reach. Raynaud’s ability to stretch the floor as a center is valuable in today’s NBA, but the fact he more than held his own defensively in Chicago, both hedging screens out to the 3-point line and altering shots at the rim, was just as important.
He also posted a 31.5” max vertical, a solid number for a seven-footer, better in fact that Khaman Maluach of Duke and South Sudan and Hansen Yang of China, both of him turned in 30” max verticals, and three and a half inches better than Derik Queen of Maryland. Of the bigs on hand in Chicago, Asa Newell of Georgia registered the most impressive number, 36.5”.
He has quite the back story: an engineering major who was a walk-on at Stanford...
Maxime Raynaud jumped to the No. 22 spot in the ESPN Top 100 after his strong showing at the NBA Draft Combine. The 7'1 French big made 67 3s in 35 games this season.
Didn't fully focus on basketball until his senior year of high school, committing to Stanford as a walk-on. pic.twitter.com/yar50bsadJ
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) May 22, 2025
Raynaud has some unsurprising weaknesses, as Draft veteran Aran Smith of NBADraft.net wrote last month.
Can struggle with quicker bigs or stretch-fives who pull him away from the paint … Offensively, he’s reliant on touches near the basket and isn’t a player who can create his own shot in isolation … His shooting form is solid, but the volume and consistency from three still need to improve to be considered a legitimate floor-spacing big … Despite four years in college, he’s still learning how to impose himself physically.
Still, Smith sees some potential as well. His bottom line:
High character prospect with international experience and a professional demeanor …
His NBA comparison, per Smith, is Luke Kornet who went undrafted. Here is the requisite highlight package:
Final Note
Hope for news.