Reports: Brooklyn Nets to sign 6’8" Chinese guard Yongxi ‘Jacky’ Cui to two-way (2024)

Reports out of China — and Portland— have the Brooklyn Nets close to filling one of their two remaining two-way slots. They’re expected to sign Yongxi “Jacky” Cui, a 6’8” Chinese shooting guard, prior to the opening of training camp.

Nets would neither confirm nor deny the reports. But Cui’s Weibo account recently followed those of Day’ Ron Sharpe, Jalen Wilson, and Cameron Johnson lending added credibility to the reports.

The 21-year-old Cui — pronounced “tsway” — has had one of the more interesting development paths in the 2024 rookie class. He first popped up on NBA scouts’ radars after he attended the NBA Global Academy in Australia, working closely with the league’s Head of International Basketball Development, Chris Ebersole, then made an impression at the G League Combine.

The sharp-shooter put up two strong seasons with the Guangzhou Loong Lions in the CBA, averaging 15.6 PPG in the 2023-24 season.

After going undrafted this past June, Cui latched on with the Portland Trail Blazers’ Summer League roster. He played sparingly, but managed some highlight plays nonetheless..

Cui, with a 6’9” wingspan and a 34” max vertical, has length and a sweet stroke: at the G League’s pre-draft workout camp, he made 23-of-25 shots in the 3-point shooting drill. Just a drill? Absolutely. Impressive? That too.

The youngest member of the Chinese national team, Cui could have played in the NCAA — he had offers. Instead, he chose the Chinese Basketball Association. Here’s some highlights from last season…

He agreed to an Exhibit 10 deal with Portland in late June, but never officially signed the contract and instead decided to pursue a two-way with a then unidentified team, according to veteran NBA and Trail Blazer writer Sean Highkin. It now appears that decision turned out to be prudent and that team is the Nets.

Last Thursday, reports began appearing in the Chinese media that Cui was close to signing with Brooklyn.

As you’d expect of one of — if not the — top young Chinese prospects, Cui has a strong cohort of fans from his native country. Per sources, a huge contingent of Chinese media mainly focused on Cui attended Portland’s practices and contests at Las Vegas Summer League. (More than a decade ago, Yi Jianlian attracted a similar contingent of Chinese media when he played for the New Jersey Nets.)

That’s likely to continue in Brooklyn where Joe and Clara Wu Tsai have owned the Nets and Liberty since 2019 and have been upfront about bringing in Chinese players. The Liberty has had 6’9” Han Xu under contract for the last four years. She took off this WNBA season to focus on Olympics. Joe Tsai spoke to NetsDaily back in March 2019 about the possibility of Brooklyn rostering a Chinese player:

“I’ve been on record saying if there’s good Chinese players, I would do anything to help them come — if they want to come play in the NBA, I would do anything to help them do that.”

“I would be very pleased if we had someone from China. China is a large country with a large population, a strong passion for basketball, and also with the authorities very focused on developing sports. I think it’s just a matter of time.”

In a recent video, Tsai told Chinese fans that he would not bring in a Chinese player unless they are ready...

“If I bring in a Chinese player, it is meaningless if he doesn’t have the ability to play,” Tsai said via a machine translation. “If he can’t play, I will be criticized. If he can play, it will be meaningful.”

Cui would be the Nets’ first Chinese player since the Tsais bought the team although Chinese-American Jeremy Lin, a friend of Joe Tsai, was on the Nets roster when he bought a minority stake in the team back in 2017.

Indeed, it can be argued that in Cui and Han, the Tsais’ could have the two best young Chinese men’s and women’s hoop prospects on their rosters. Joe Tsai has also spoken in recent months of using basketball, China’s most popular sport, and specifically the NBA, to help improve U.S.-Chinese relations.

Of course, Brooklyn wouldn’t be interested in rostering Cui if he couldn’t play. According to NBA International’s Ebersole, he can. Other than showcasing real shot-making potential, Cui’s best skill, says Ebersole, may be his defense As Hoopshype quoted Ebersole in June: “He’s got really good feet and plays super hard. Those ingredients, for both on-ball defense and off-ball positioning, serve him well.

“He was really, truly like cracking jokes. I just thought he was so impressive, willing to make mistakes and take risks,” Ebersole added. “Everybody, from our staff to all his teammates, thinks so highly of him because of that.

The Nets worked out Cui prior to the NBA Draft but they had no picks and he went undrafted.

A Cui signing would also further help the Brooklyn Nets’ popularity with NBA fans in China, as we recently covered:

The Nets have three times as many followers on Weibo, the big Chinese social media site, as they do Twitter worldwide: 7.2 million on Weibo to just over two million on the site now known as X. And that’s just the beginning.

Late last year, Mailman, a Shanghai-based sports consultancy, issued its annual “Red Card” survey of how the NBA is doing in China. It’s a compendium and analysis of which teams and players have captured the Chinese fan’s hearts. The headline for the Nets was that because of all that seeding of fertile ground, the Brooklyn Nets are now the third most popular team in a country of 1.4 billion, 300 million of whom play basketball. They’re behind only the traditional leaders, the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers.

Nets fans now rooting for a rebuilding team are unlikely to care much about of that aspect of any signing but adding an international prospect like Cui would indicate once again that the organization is tapping into a wide variety of resources to find NBA talent.

So far in 2024, Brooklyn has signed two former two-way players, Jalen Wilson and Keon Johnson, to standard if partially guaranteed contracts. Those two — one homegrown draft pick and one multi-franchise reclamation project — took much different paths to inking their respective contracts. In addition, the Nets have 20-year-old 6’6” wing Jaylen Martin already signed to a two-way. Martin had been a two-way for the Knicks.

Cui’s path to a two-way contract would be much longer than theirs, both literally and figuratively. Now, Brooklyn has to hope their oft-successful development personnel in Long Island can again work some magic. Two-way contracts pay close to $600,000 and don’t count against the salary cap.

For a closer look at Cui’s game, read this detailed scouting report from Ersin Demir.

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