Exclusive | Noah Clowneys recent funk will be a telling sign for Nets

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 reboun...