The Brooklyn Nets pulled off the unthinkable en route to landing both former Boston Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving and former Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant this offseason.

However, Nets general manager Sean Marks had a plan the whole time so it appears — whether such a plan involved Irving and Durant or not.

“If free agency hadn't panned out the way it did, there were other alternatives,” Marks recently told Ian Begley of SNY. “Who do we go back out and try and get? What other contracts do we absorb? How do we recoup some of those assets that we may have given up?”

However, the Nets' highly successful offseason began long before the team added the tandem of Irving and Durant as Brooklyn initially created some additional — and quite valuable — available salary cap space by shipping veteran swingman Allen Crabbe to the Atlanta Hawks.

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“We debated that for a long, long time,” Marks added, via SNY. “That was a tough decision. … For us it was a calculated one. It was one that sent a little bit of a message, to be quite honest. It was, ‘Hey listen, we do have the room, we're ready to go and for those that are watching, here we are.'”

Of course, the Nets will more than likely be without Durant for the entirety of the 2019-20 campaign as the former Warriors standout continues to recover from a significant lower leg injury that he suffered during the most recent postseason, which concluded his time with Golden State.