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Following a season in which the Brooklyn Nets' Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving experiment finally collapsed, general manager Sean Marks is expected to remain with the team next year, sources told the New York Post.
The Durant-Irving era was marred by off-court drama and severely underwhelming on-court results. Brooklyn appeared destined to make a title run in the 2021 playoffs after taking a 2-0 lead on the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks. However, injuries to Irving and James Harden handicapped the Nets as they fell in seven games.
Brooklyn's front office and ownership were criticized the following season for their handling of Irving's refusal to comply with New York's workplace vaccine mandate. The Nets said the guard would not practice or play with the team until he was eligible as a full participant only to bring him back for road games midway through the season. The dysfunction surrounding Irving's status led James Harden to force his way to Philadelphia at the 2022 trade deadline. Brooklyn was eventually swept by the Celtics in the first round.
Following the embarrassing exit, Durant requested a trade, publicly calling for Marks and head coach Steve Nash to be fired. In response, Nets owner Joe Tsai quickly voiced his public support of Marks:
Our front office and coaching staff have my support. We will make decisions in the best interest of the Brooklyn Nets.
— Joe Tsai (@joetsai1999) August 8, 2022
It appears that support has not wavered amid a turbulent season. The Post's source said that “ownership has full confidence in the front office to build for the future.” Another source described the owner and GM as having been “in lockstep.”
Despite the circus of the last offseason, the Netsroster Marks assembled did show highly-encouraging results this year. After Irving returned from an early suspension for posts linking to an antisemitic film, Brooklyn came together and surged up the Eastern Conference standings. The team went 18-2 over six weeks from November to January, the best 20-game stretch in franchise history, positioning them one game back of the league's top record.
However, Durant sprained his MCL for the second consecutive season in the last win of that stretch. The Nets managed to tread water with the former MVP expected to return post-All-Star break, but Irving ended any last-ditch hope of a championship when he requested a trade at the deadline. Exhausted by the theatrics of the last three seasons, Marks traded the guard to Dallas and promptly granted Durant's wish to be moved to Phoenix.
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Brooklyn received Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, five first-round picks, one pick swap, and four second-round picks for the star duo. Bridges has shown immediate returns, turning heads across the league in a lead-scoring role. The 26-year-old became the first player in NBA history to average 25 points on 50/40/90 shooting splits in his first 10 games with a new team.
For all Marks' struggles managing the personalities of Durant and Irving, his track record of draft success bodes well for a Nets team that has 11 first-round picks over the next seven years. He selected Caris LeVert (20th), Jarrett Allen (22nd), Nic Claxton (31st), and Cam Thomas (27th) with late picks. The GM also picked up Joe Harris and Spencer Dinwiddie from the G-League early in his tenure with both going on to have respected careers.
That eye for overlooked talent allowed Marks to build the Nets up to a point where they caught Durant and Irving's eye. He did so while working with virtually zero assets following the infamous Paul Pierce-Kevin Garnett Celtics trade. With a stockpile of draft picks this time around, Marks acknowledged the team-building process will look dramatically different following the Durant and Irving trades.
“I think we have this front office and this organization with Joe and Clara (Tsai) have shown the ability to put full resources behind making Brooklyn the championship contender and that's exactly what the goal is going to be moving forward here,” Marks said “We'll we go about building it a little bit different way. The last time I took over I didn’t have anything. So it definitely looks different. What we're starting with right now, it looks different.”
Marks voiced a desire to remain competitive, affirming that the expectation is for this year's team to compete in the playoffs. After it appeared he could be on the chopping block following the failure of the Durant-Irving era, the sixth-year GM will get a second lease on life. And Marks said “nothing's changed” when he thinks about his goals for the franchise.
“We've got an incredible opportunity to do something in this borough and that hasn't left me from the minute I wanted to come here and build something here in Brooklyn. Nothing's changed,” Marks said after the trade deadline. “I think we certainly owe it to these Nets fans on a daily basis. I think that's the way we approached this is to put something out there that the fans can be proud of and find young men that this borough can really get behind. To do something special in Brooklyn, there's gonna be nothing like that.”
