Sean Marks 10-year tenure as GM of the Brooklyn Nets may be most easily understood through a series of snippets from the NetsDaily archives:
June 30, 2019 … 5:13 p.m. ET … The Clean Sweep
In a coup with few historic precedents, the Brooklyn Nets will sign Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan in the next few weeks becoming the big winners of free agency 2019…
February 9, 2023, 1:34 a.m. ET … End of
the Big Three….
The inability of the Nets to capitalize on their signings of KD and Kyrie — and the subsequent trade for James Harden — now becomes a managerial failure of the first order with first Harden, then Irving and finally Durant asking out.
“This is the greatest failure in NBA history,” said Zach Lowe on NBA Today without exaggeration. One league source told NetsDaily Wednesday that a housecleaning is likely to follow at HSS Training Center this off-season.
June 25, 2024, 10:46 p.m. ET … Rebuild!
NetsWorld turned upside down.
Mikal Bridges, the centerpiece of the Brooklyn Nets trade of Kevin Durant a year and a half ago, has been traded to the New York Knicks in one of two monster moves that has sent Brooklyn into a full rebuild. In the other, the Nets and the Houston Rockets executed a swap of picks that will bring two of the Nets trade assets from the James Harden trade back to Brooklyn. adding to the rebuild.
The trades are the latest in a series of moves that have taken the Nets from being the odds-on NBA championship favorite in 2021-22 to a team whose short-term future looks bleak.
Up, down, up again?
It’s tempting to recount a long list of successes and failures over the decade, but why? The Nets success, failure, even identity are tied to Sean Marks, his skills, his personality. He has been the Nets, for good or bad. That is undeniable after a decade in the job in the NBA … maybe in most jobs. He has gone from having been personally and emotionally thanked on the concourses of Barclays Center to having some of those same fans demand his firing on social media and having pundits literally laugh at his draft choices on national TV. At present, there is no indication — none— that his relationship with Joe Tsai, the principal owner, is anything but solid. His contract, whose terms have never been publicly discussed, appears to have one more season to run after this one. Think continuity, continuity, continuity. Joe Tsai does.
It’s also tempting to grade the tenure, or grade where the Nets stand currently, maybe even grade each transaction, then add it all up. Not much value there either. Everyone from fans to pundits knows what happened (see above) and their opinions aren’t going to change. It’s clickbait to be discussed and forgotten. Besides, there are plenty of pundits who have and continue to grade Marks.
Just this morning, Sam Quinn of CBS Sports did his semi-annual rankings of NBA front offices, apparently unaware of the anniversary. He ranked Marks and the Nets at No. 15. That put them just behind the Miami Heat (Pat Riley) and just ahead of the Detroit Pistons (Trajan Langdon, his former acolyte!) Like many who believe in Marks, both inside and outside the organization, Quinn’s analysis is somewhat defensive.
The Nets are the team I most consistently find myself defending in arguments about these rankings. A lot of the criticism Brooklyn’s front office gets is unfair. Sean Marks took over a team without control over its first-round picks, built it into a championship favorite, and then watched it fall apart because of a pandemic. I’m not punishing a general manager for COVID, and if I were to punish general managers over abrupt James Harden trade requests, we’d be dinging a huge chunk of this list. Besides, they’ve rebounded quite nicely.
And Rick Carlisle, as good a head coach as there is in the NBA right now, had kind words for the Nets future just last week.
“They do a great job of developing young players here. Jordi’s been really top of the heap with what they’ve done the last couple of years. [Nolan] Traore’s gonna keep getting better. [Egor] Dëmin’s getting better. Their young bigs have progressed a lot over the last couple of years. The future here is very bright.”
That’s better than any pundit’s take!
What it ALL means is that GMs, including Marks, are judged on one thing: “what have you done for me lately?” and “lately” in the context of multi-year rebuild is very very subjective. The Nets are tanking or “playing the probabilities” as some might say and it shows in the (losing) record. On the other hand, Marks & co. have followed the time-honored rebuilding path — acquire good young players and draft picks, optimize cap space and otherwise be patient just as he did in the first rebuild in hopes of getting back to the promised land. And never, ever, minimize luck, good or bad.
Brian Lewis recently interviewed Yankees’ GM Brian Cashman, one of Marks’ biggest supporters (and a GM with similar longevity and legions of fans who think he too has stayed too long.) He advised fans to think about what Marks has done once already, believing he can do it again.
“Process is something that is important, but doesn’t guarantee ultimate outcomes,” Cashman told The Post. “Sean has proven he can build a winner. He’s done that. Ultimately they didn’t get to the promised land with the championship, but he did everything lined up to put himself and put themselves in a position to do so. And I know he’s capable of doing that again.
“That’s what he’s going through right now in the fact that Joe Tsai — one of the brightest minds of our generation — sees the talent in Sean to stay invested in [him] to lead that operation. I think it’ll pay off for him in the end, and pay off for the Brooklyn Nets, because Sean is someone that you’d rather have on your team than put in the open market for somebody else to benefit from.”
In our own discussions, we heard that last line more than once from professionals much of what Lewis heard from Cashman and others. He’s very smart and has a record better than most when it’s all added up, but there are others who take more tempered approach. Smart yes but at the same time subject to big mistakes brought on by hubris is one criticism.
The Nets, said one, have had a general tendency to hang on to players too long, often have too high an asking price. Then, those players “fuck up the locker room” before being traded on the cheap or cut. That list is long, but can be repeated by any Nets fans who’s worn black-and-white and felt black-and-blue: Ben Simmons, Spencer Dinwiddie, James Harden, Cam Thomas and of course, Kyrie Irving. (No we are not re-litigating Kyrie’s exit.)
That he said has let to volatility and plain old-fashioned chaos, something players like to avoid.
On the other hand, said the same source, the Nets — Marks and Tsai — know what to do when the big decision arrives, arguing they can “kill” at the right moment, noting what they got for Kevin Durant and Mikal Bridges, trades that ultimately led to a haul of more than 10 draft picks and some ancillary assets.
It’s all part of the way Marks looks at things, say those who know him: don’t dwell on the failures or successes. Move on. He is not one to replay his failings over and over in his head. These are sunk costs. And he doesn’t care that someone, whether Brian Windhorst or Bill Simmons or Jake Fischer, doesn’t like what he did. He has a thick skin and an ability to shut out what he dismissively calls “noise.”
“One thing I really appreciate about him is he never looks back” Irina Pavlova, the Mikhail Prokhorov executive ran the Nets and led the search committee that recommended him, told Lewis. “Once something’s gone, ‘Boom. What’s next?’ He builds from there, which is great, especially for a team like the Nets where there’s something going wrong all the time.”
Indeed, Marks understands it is a business, something he learned as a player, toiling for seven NBA clubs and one in Poland. He in fact holds the NBA record for fewest minutes — less that 10 per game — in a career lasting 10 years or longer. He’s also worked with two of the most successful businessmen ever, ones who earned their fortunes in the cut-throat post-Communist Russia and still-Communist but wild west economically China. He’s not a babe in the woods.
He is charismatic, helped by that daunting 7-foot visage, but often hubris has taken over, say critics. He may not be a dictator but he knows what he wants is a common refrain … and a big part of that is loyalty.
Historically, his selection of head coaches, arguably the most impactful decision any GM ever makes, has been the weakest lines on his resume’. At this point, it seems like Marks has finally found his coach. It seems everyone from owner to fans to players to competitors believe that Jordi Fernandez is the real deal. Hiring him was another one of those “killer” moves the league source described. Multiple teams had interviewed Fernandez but decided for whatever reason, passed But before he hired Fernandez, Marks record was not so good, the thinnest entry on his resume’.
He chose a development expert in Kenny Atkinson, who did his primary job but then was dumped. The official press release back in 2020 said the departure was by mutual agreement but by the time Atkinson returned to the head coaching job in Cleveland last year he made it very clear that he was “fired” and that it still stung. He said he was told that he lost his job because didn’t match what the Nets wanted in the treatment of “superstars.” Steve Nash, who Marks had long wanted in some capacity before hiring him to replace Atkinson, was a valiant attempt to match a superstar coach with a superstar team, but one of those superstars let it be known he wanted Nash — and Marks — fired and the x’s and o’s? Well, that was an issue. Jacque Vaughn, on the other hand, is seen in less positive terms. Much less positive.
Indeed one big issue, intimately related to those coaching issues, was his and the organization’s willingness to do the bidding of those superstars. Kyrie didn’t think the team needed a coach. He or KD could do it, he said. KD wanted Ime Udoka even after he had been suspended by his previous employer for harassment. Durant also didn’t like a lot of the supporting roster, didn’t like how the roster was constructed. Harden remained out of shape virtually the entire time he was on the roster, his attention devoted more to strip clubs than weight rooms. Among each other, there always seemed an uneasy truce.
A lot of that has been seemingly been rectified in public actions. There’s plenty of evidence that they are going for the homegrown, high character player. It’s not just lip service. The historic five first rounders spoke to that, their youth, their character, their willingness to make things work. Marks & co. apparently learned their lesson. No need to call about Ja Morant! No more short term fixes. No more chances.
As B.J. Johnson, Marks No. 2 said in the SCOUT docu-series produced by the Nets internal media, “A lot of work went into what Brooklyn is going to be in the future. Regardless of who comes in here, we’re not going to change. They’ve got to adjust to us. Overall, that’s what it’s about here.”
More than a subtle admission that the previous plan — go for it all, spend wildly, throw together the best of the best and hope for a ring — wasn’t the right choice. They will have to find a superstar or superstars to bring them back into contention. Maybe it’s whoever they get lucky enough to get in the lottery come May 10. Maybe it’s someone who is attracted by the progress they see in the young kids and Jordi Fernandez and of course, there’s always the bright lights and big city of New York. If you can make it here … you know the rest.
Overall, the current report card is mixed, but generally positive as Carlisle alluded. Lessons get learned.
The development operation is seen as a solid, better than most. One league source discussing one of the Net recent pick-ups told ND that the player may not have shown much with his previous team “but he has a chance with Nets development staff.”
The performance team retains a very good reputation as well despite a lot of turnover, essentially four performance directors in four years and some recent drama. The medical team is staffed by the Hospital for Special Surgery. None better. The scouting staff is reportedly the largest in the NBA and Marks just recently added the Oklahoma City Thunder’s director of scouting. That can’t hurt. Its success of course will take some time to define.
The “soft science” part of the staff — analytics, capology, etc. — is also seen in a positive light, but again there’s been turnover. There are some rising stars like Kory Jones and Kyle Hines. Both are nominally assistant GMs for Long Island but play bigger roles than that, Jones in Brooklyn’s basketball operations, Hines in scouting and development. Makar Gevorkian is the capologist who’s helped Marks through some of the team’s bigger moves.
Now, the big challenge for the Nets GM: the next 10 years. Whether he’s around or not, his imprint is going to on this team, his team for a long time. Brooklyn is now younger after the deadline than they were before and they were the youngest in the league by a not insignificant margin. Their draft pick in June will also be a teenager. But for all the preparation, it’s time to execute. As one league source told NetsDaily, the right draft choice alone could mean the difference of years.
Every indication is that the rebuild portion of the team’s overall strategy is now nearing an end. Now, it’s build rather than rebuild. Expect aggressive moves across the board.
As we have repeated ad infinitum, they have every possible asset needed to be aggressive, the 33 draft picks (10 first rounders and 20 second rounders that can be traded whenever they want,) perhaps $50 million in cap space and as Sam Quinn noted, an owner willing to spend. It should be noted, as Bloomberg News did, that about half of Tsai’s net worth is now sports-related and the Brooklyn Nets are the centerpiece. He wants to win. He will accept no less.
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