Former University of Kansas small forward Jalen Wilson will play for the Brooklyn Nets during the upcoming NBA 2K25 summer league in Las Vegas, the Nets announced on Friday.
Wilson, a 6-foot-6, 220-pound native of Denton, Texas, helped the Nets to a spot in the semifinals of the summer league a year ago. He in fact was named second-team all-summer league in Vegas after averaging 17.6 points and 7.8 rebounds in five games.
The 23-year-old Wilson, a second-round pick of the Nets in the 2023 NBA Draft after a four-year career at KU (2019-23), went on to average 5.0 points, 3.0 rebounds and 1.0 assist per game his rookie season with the Nets .
He played in 43 games total with three starts. He averaged 15.4 minutes per contest.
Wilson, a starter on KU’s 2022 NCAA title team, hit 42.5% of his shots and 32.4% of his 3s his rookie campaign in the NBA. He also played in 11 games for the NBA G League’s Long Island Nets, averaging 19.0 points, 7.5 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game.
The Nets indicated Wilson was in their long-range plans in March when they converted his rookie two-way contract to a standard three-year deal.
According to spotrac.com , his three-year contract is worth $4,963,534, including $925,000 guaranteed and an average annual salary of $1,654,511.
In 2024-25, Wilson will earn a base salary of $1,891,857.
The contract becomes fully guaranteed if he is on the team on Jan. 10, 2025.
“Emotions were kind of all over the place (in signing the 3-year deal),” Wilson said in an interview last March with reporters who cover the Nets, including for SI.com . “This is something I’ve been working really hard for. ... It means a lot. This is the birthplace of my professional career, so it’s pretty cool to see how valuable people feel I am. Just a blessing to be here.”
Last year’s interim coach, Kevin Ollie , said of Wilson: “(He is) just a constant professional. Get in the gym early, leave late, all those different things that everybody says, but they’re true. Always in the lab, working on his game, perfecting his game, open to coaching. And just a great role model. Yeah, he’s young, but he’s a leader. And we see those qualities in him, we see the leadership in him and he’s just going to continue to develop because he’s open for learning and he’s eager for learning.”
Wilson is not the team’s only second-year player on the roster for summer league, which runs from July 12-22. Noah Clowney and Dariq Whitehead also are on the roster.
Brooklyn’s first game in Vegas will be against former KU wing Johnny Furphy’s Indiana Pacers on July 12. It’ll start at 7 p.m. Central on NBA TV.
It could be a long season in Brooklyn, according to netswire.com’s Sharif Phillips-Keaton .
“The Nets have chosen to enter a full rebuild after trading Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks for forward Bojan Bogdanovic and as many as five first-round picks,” wrote Phillips-Keaton. “With Brooklyn now focused on the young players on the roster and their development, that could make summer basketball more interesting for Nets fans.”
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