Inside the Pros and Cons of Nate Ament's Potential Fit With the Brooklyn Nets

The Brooklyn Nets won just 20 games this past season, and while they established Michael Porter Jr. as a productive scorer at 24.2 points per game, they failed to get sizable impact from anybody else on the roster.

After a 2025 NBA Draft in which they used a record five first-round picks, no single rookie established consistent impact. Egor Demin and Nolan Traore demonstrated intriguing flashes of upside, but those flashes were too far and too few to lift the Nets out of the NBA's bottom three records, which both sent the franchise right back to hoping for lottery luck it didn't get and did little to help the organization feel that it has yet found its next star.

As Brooklyn approaches the 2026 NBA Draft with the sixth overall pick, the team sits at a crossroads. The roster lacks both currently valuable players and the star upside worth building around, leaving the Nets as much of a blank slate as any squad in the league.

However, the sixth pick sits just outside the range of the draft's highest-quality star bets, which forces a choice between reaching for another lower-quality star bet who could underwhelm and send the Nets right back to the bottom of the standings, or take a safer, likely contributor who would bring much-needed impact to the roster but lacks the star upside to move the needle as the centerpiece of a turnaround. This pick carries enormous pressure for a franchise that could realistically be described as directionless.

In particular, sixth overall candidate Nate Ament sticks out as a representation of the exact crossroads the Nets must navigate.

Nate Ament Brings the Star Upside the Nets Need With the Downside Risk They May Not be Able to Afford

Standing at 6-foot-9.5 with a 6-foot-11.5 wingspan, the 19-year-old Tennessee product is coming off a freshman season defined by incredible flashes of two-way talent but also concerning lows, including a subpar 51.4% conversion rate at the rim.

Ament’s talent makes him one of the highest-upside prospects in the draft, and he could truly develop into the star to begin the Nets' turnaround as a towering perimeter creator with potentially elite shot-making prowess. Few players his size can dribble into pull-ups, knock down contested threes, and create their own offense the way Ament does, which is why he entered the season as a projected top-four pick.

However, the holes in his game bring steep obstacles not only to reaching that star potential, but to becoming an impactful NBA player at all. He shot under 40 percent from the field and converted barely half his attempts at the rim, because at 211 pounds he struggled to impose his slender frame on downhill attacks, and NBA-level defense will only make this battle even more difficult.

Ament’s March Madness lows also display the concerns around his translation against steeper competition, as his production cratered against tournament-level physicality with just a 32% conversion rate on two-point attempts in the NCAA Tournament. If Ament can’t significantly improve as an inside-the-arc scorer, it’s difficult to see him blossoming into an impactful NBA wing at all.

Ament is certainly a risky NBA prospect, but he could be exactly what the Nets need at this point in their development. If the organization dedicates itself to Ament's physical and skill development, his talent gives him more star upside than any other realistic option at six. For a franchise lacking much to build around, a bet on Ament may be the best worth taking with the sixth overall pick.

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