Look at the Nets roster and it’s tough to know who will even be in Brooklyn a year from now, how many of today’s players will be a part of tomorrow’s rebuild.
But Noah Clowney is expected to be one.
The young big man — under contract for $3.4 million next season and $5.4 million in 2026-27 — is one of the few pieces who should serve as the foundation for this team after this yearlong makeover.
So his progress holds extra importance.
And though the youth in Brooklyn’s youth movement are gaining valuable experience this season, Clowney’s lessons lately have been hard-earned ones.
After a hot shooting stretch — essentially proof of concept that he’s capable of being a stretch-four befitting the modern NBA game — Clowney has hit a cold spell.
“The shots I was getting [lately] were not as easy as I had been getting. The shots I was getting before were a lot easier,” Clowney, still just 20, told The Post. “The shots I’m getting now are still easy, though. I’ve got to go out and make some of them. It ain’t much to it.”
Clowney is coming off a seven-point, 2-for-10 shooting performance Wednesday night against visiting Phoenix and Kevin Durant.
Coincidentally, Clowney is the first draft pick of the cache that Brooklyn general manager Sean Marks extracted from the Suns, taken 21st overall in 2023.
After a rookie campaign spent largely going back and forth to G League Long Island, a promising stretch at the end of the season piqued hopes that he could challenge for the starting power forward spot out of training camp this season.
That didn’t happen, with veteran Dorian Finney-Smith outright earning the job (no, he wasn’t just being put in the shop window to trade).
But the eventual trade of Finney-Smith to the Lakers just before New Year’s flung the door open for Clowney to seize the job, and he has.
It bears watching now how he handles it.
Clowney will enter Saturday’s game in a funk — averaging just 8.2 points, 4.4 rebounds and 0.6 steals over his past five tilts, shooting just 28.6 percent from the floor and 80 percent from the free-throw line.
It’s a far cry from the hot streak he’d enjoyed over the prior month. And it’s because, with this threadbare roster, foes are actually keying on Clowney.
“Teams don’t leave me open like they did before,” Clowney told The Post. “They’re not necessarily running me off the line, but [they’re making it] more difficult.”
Clowney is too diplomatic to point out the Nets’ lacking point guard play, with Ben Simmons and D’Angelo Russell both missing time of late.
Keon Johnson and Tyrese Martin struggle to facilitate.
But Clowney has hit a cold spell since last Wednesday against the Clippers — when, to be fair, the Nets lost by a staggering 59 points and nobody covered themselves in glory.
But in the prior five games, he’d averaged 15.4 points, five boards and a steal, looking the part of a solid piece going forward.
And in the 11 games before that complete team collapse in Los Angeles, Clowney had averaged 12.9 points and 4.5 rebounds. His shooting splits were a solid 41.7/38.7/95.8, successfully spacing the floor.
The past five have told a different story. But coach Jordi Fernandez insists it’s more like a tiny chapter.
“I’ll give you the answer that my analytics team gives me: Shooting, you don’t take short sample sizes. He’s a good shooter and he’ll be a good shooter,” Fernandez said. “If you miss some shots in five games, guess what? The next five are going in. That’s how he believes, that’s how he works, and that’s how good he is and how good his shot is.
“Obviously, in whatever many reps — hundreds, or what the case may be — if the shot doesn’t go in above 34, 35 percent, then you have a different problem. But he’s a good shooter. He’s done a great job and a five-game stretch for us means nothing. It’s actually more encouraging because if he’s missed this or he’s not got great percentages in the last five games, that means that you know it’s coming soon.”
