Joshua Jefferson will suit up for the Brooklyn Nets for the first time on Saturday. The rookie forward missed the team’s first four Summer League games while waiting for the Julius Randle trade to go through, but a league source confirmed to ClutchPoints that he’ll be available against the Atlanta Hawks.
The No. 28 pick in the draft landed in Brooklyn alongside Randle when a three-team deal finally became official on Friday. Brooklyn sent the No. 33 pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves and Nic Claxton to the Chicago Bulls to make it happen.
Jefferson played last season at Iowa State, where he put up numbers that turned heads across the Big 12. The 6-foot-8 forward averaged 16.4 points, 7.4 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 1.6 steals while shooting 47.4% from the field, 34.5% from three and 70% from the free throw line. That production earned him first-team All-Big 12 honors and a consensus second-team All-American nod.
“Josh was a guy that we have absolutely been all over all year long,” Nets GM Sean Marks said. “We watched how he played the game, his skill set. That definitely translates. [He has a] high IQ, and I think when you watch him play and when Iowa State played through him, his teammates feed off of him. He’s definitely a facilitator out there, the toughness that he has. So there were a lot of intangibles, and then he’s a winner, an absolute flat-out winner. So there’s an edge to how he plays and a toughness, which we loved.”
Jefferson joins a frontcourt that’s suddenly crowded. Randle is the headliner, but the Nets also have Noah Clowney, Danny Wolf and No. 43 pick Tyler Bilodeau competing for minutes. Wolf and Bilodeau were active for Brooklyn’s Summer League game Friday against the New York Knicks. Whether either plays Saturday on the second night of a back-to-back hasn’t been announced.
For a Nets team in the middle of a roster reset, Jefferson’s debut is a small but meaningful step. He’s not the flashiest name in this draft class, but the front office clearly sees him as a guy who can plug into their system without a lot of hand-holding. The kind of player who doesn’t need the ball to affect a game. We’ll see how that looks against actual NBA-level competition starting this weekend.
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