Nets Rumors: GM Sean Marks Expected to Return After Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving Trades
The Brooklyn Nets have been a few trapeze artists and human cannonballs short of a circus for the past two seasons. But they aren't going to move on from the ringleader just yet.
Sean Marks is expected to return as the organization's general manager next season, according to Brian Lewis of the New York Post, with a "a highly placed league source" telling him that "ownership has full confidence in that front office to build for the future."
Another source told Lewis that Marks and team governor Joseph Tsai are "in lockstep."
Marks is proving to be resilient in Brooklyn. In August, Kevin Durant reportedly gave Tsai an ultimatum in August: Trade him or get rid of Marks and head coach Steve Nash.
While neither scenario played out in the short term, Nash was let go early in the 2022-23 season and Durant was eventually traded to the Phoenix Suns. Marks, however, won't be following either out the door.
In what has been an eventful year for the Nets, at times for the wrong reasons, a change at general manager wouldn't have been the most shocking development.
When Durant and Tsai met in August, the 13-time All-Star reportedly "stated he does not have faith in the team's direction," per The Athletic's Shams Charania.
For many people, the irony in that statement was that Durant and his running mate, Kyrie Irving, ostensibly had a pretty large say in the direction of the organization over the past several years.
It was that duo who reportedly pushed for a coaching change, going from Kenny Atkinson to Steve Nash two years ago. One of the issues reportedly was that Atkinson preferred to start young player Jarrett Allen—now an All-Star for the Cleveland Cavaliers—over veteran DeAndre Jordan, a player who has bounced around three teams in the past two seasons and hasn't impressed at any stop.
So in came Nash, though Irving almost immediately undercut the authority of the head coach.
"I don't really see us having a head coach," he told Kevin Durant's podcast The ETCs in October 2020. "You know what I mean? KD could be a head coach. I could be a head coach."
The drama only intensified from there. Irving basically ghosted the Nets in early 2021. The team traded for James Harden in the 2020-21 season, only to see injuries largely keep the trio of Harden, Irving and Durant off the court together that season.
Then there was the ordeal of Irving not being able to play home games for a large chunk of the 2021-22 season due to his unvaccinated status. And Harden eventually demanding, and receiving, a trade. Ben Simmons, who came the other way in that deal, never played a game for the Nets last season and has struggled this year. And the team was eliminated in four games by the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs, an embarrassing sweep for the organization.
Come the offseason, the Nets—perhaps sick of Irving's mercurial and unpredictable nature—didn't offer him a max extension.
Durant, annoyed at how the Nets were approaching the basketball side of things, demanded a trade and reportedly wanted the ouster of Marks and Nash. He told B/R's Chris Haynes in November:
"It wasn't difficult at all to request a trade because it was about ball. I went to them and was like, 'Yo, I don't like how we are preparing. I don't like shootarounds. I like practices. I need more. I want to work on more s--t. Hold me accountable. Get on my ass in film if that's going to help you get on everybody else's head. I want to do more closeouts. I want to work on more shell drills at practice.'"
"This was the type of s--t I was coming at them with. It wasn't like, 'Yo, y'all need to make sure everybody around me can make my life easier.' Hell nah, I want to make everybody else's life easier. Ask Steve Nash, you can go call him right now. I would say, 'Yo, I need more closeout drills. We need to practice more.' That's what I was on."
And in November, Irving amplified an antisemitic movie on his social media accounts and was ultimately suspended by the team before eventually apologizing. He was traded to the Dallas Mavericks ahead of February's trade deadline, and Durant soon followed, going to Phoenix.
That ended the duo's time in Brooklyn, setting up the Nets for another retool. The 47-year-old, who has served as the organization's general manager since 2016, led the rebuild that eventually enticed Durant and Irving to join the organization in the first place.
Now, he's being tasked with doing it again in the aftermath of their dysfunctional time in Brooklyn.
