The Long Island Nets, Brooklyn Nets’ G League affiliatetipped off their season last Friday with a win and then back-to-back losses.

Long Island’s campaign started at home against the Maine Celtics, last season’s G League runner-up. It was a strong debut from Killian Hayes, the former No. 7 overall pick, who has started his season with the Nets’ development team as he works his way back from a hip problem that kept him out preseason. The Frenchman powered Long Island to a win with 19 points, six rebounds and four assists in 30 minutes.

At this point, Hayes really should be Long Island’s best player. He has experience in the NBA – years of it – as well as in Europe and FIBA. But as he recovers from his illness, that won’t always be the case. Watch the Nets’ second G League game, a 118-99 loss to the rival Westchester Knicks.

Hayes struggled against the Knicks, scoring eight points in 26 minutes. That night it was AJ Lawson who scored 18 points to go with six rebounds and was the Nets’ top performer. Lawson has 57 NBA games under his belt, including a career-high 42 games with the Dallas Mavericks last season. Now he’s not even on a two-way street contractwhich speaks to how killer and talent-heavy the NBA is.

Lawson was just as good with 17 points and nine rebounds in Long Island’s rematch with Westchester, which was a close 127-117 loss at Nassau Coliseum. Two-way vane Jaylen Martin played 29 minutes for the Nets’ G League team that night, stuffing the stat sheet with 17 points, five boards, three assists, two steals and two blocks. It was a better outing from Martin than his G League debut in the previous game, where he scored four points in 16 minutes.

Head coach Mfon Udofia’s squad has some other interesting players such as former second-round pick Kendall Brown or Long Island-born Egyptian international center Patrick Gardnerbut admittedly, much of the attention will be on Dariq Whitehead. The No. 22 pick in the 2023 NBA draft is not officially on the Nets’ G League roster but will play heavily for Long Island.

Whitehead has started all three of the Nets’ G League games, and there have been more rough moments than bright ones thus far. The former five-star high school recruit capped the season with 16 points, six rebounds and four assists against Maine but followed that up with back-to-back seven-point nights against Westchester.

Whitehead struggles for efficiency — he’s shooting 32.4% from the field on 11-of-34 shooting — but his process is more concerning than the paltry numbers. The Nets wing is coming off two pre-NBA surgeries and then a season-ending shin procedure last season. Through three games, and it’s still early enough for that caveat to be necessary, Whitehead’s lift and run/jump athleticism unfortunately look more like his Summer League tapes than his Montverde Academy mixtapes.

Next Saturday, Long Island travels to Washington, DC to play Capital City Go-Go. The team’s next game isn’t until Friday, Nov. 22 against the Raptors 905 in Canada.

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