The Brooklyn Nets Blockbuster Era Is Over, Now Sean Marks Can Get Back To What He Does Best
And so ends a thrilling, controversial, chaotic, and baffling era in the NBA. Back in July 2019, Brooklyn Nets general manager Sean Marks made a massive franchise-altering decision to ditch the humble but successful grassroots rebuild he’d embarked upon to that point in favour of the utter star power of top tier free agency. That was when Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant chose to sign together for the Nets. A fresh force in the NBA had emerged.
Three and a half years later, Durant and Irving have both been traded mid-season in the space of a couple of days. One drama on top of another chased by injuries and coaching changes and a new owner beginning to put his fingerprints on the team... it all got too much to handle. Irving was sent to Dallas. Durant soon followed him out the door bound for Phoenix. And that was the end of that.
It was an absolutely fascinating experiment while it lasted. One which felt like a culmination of the grand direction that the entire NBA had been heading towards and now also operates as a cautious warning for that very same reason. The idea of star players teaming up to try and win championships, of star players understanding their value (and therefore power) within an organisation as they did so... that’s nothing new. You can trace it back to the Miami Heat’s Big Three. You can trace it back to Kobe and Shaq on the Lakers. You can trace it back as far as you want to go. But the Brooklyn Nets took it to the outer limits.
Kinda ironic when you consider they had a New Zealander GM and a Russian owner soon to make way for a Chinese-Canadian owner but these Brooky Nets were the ones to follow that most American of strategies and go all the way in for absolutely everything. It’s not only that they dumped the grassroots rebuild overnight, it’s that when they did they went for the complete opposite ideals. Sneaky transactions and a focus on coaching became superstar dudes recruiting each other and dictating things on the court.
The first season, with Durant out injured, unfolded with a sense of vertigo due to that sudden change in approach... which led directly to coach Kenny Atkinson losing his job. This was a win-now franchise all of a sudden and he was too tethered to the old ways so he soon got the boot. It’d be a lie to say that Steve Nash replaced KA because he had close working relationships with Irving and Durant – realistically his closest working relationship was with former teammate Sean Marks – but those two would have signed off on the idea of Nash as a first-time head coach and Marks will have picked him with them in mind.
Then they leaned even further into the new way of doing things by trading for James Harden. Two hero-ballers wasn’t enough. What’s if we grabbed a third? In a slice of poetic symbolism, Jarrett Allen and Caris LeVert were two players that the Nets gave away in that trade – two underdog draft picks that Atkinson’s Nets had developed into genuinely excellent NBA players (Allen’s since made an All Star team, while LeVert might have done had he not been so afflicted by injuries).
Problem was, assembling that team was one thing. The Nets then had to figure out how to live with it... and that was something they never quite figured out. The season before the Nets went blockbuster, they’d made the playoffs with a 42-40 record before losing 4-1 to the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round. The first year of the New Era they only scraped into the playoffs with a 35-47 record and were swept in the first round by the Toronto Raptors (this was the bubble season, in fact their bubble form was all that crept them into the postseason). Injuries were the main factor there, no Durant and all that. Plus a coaching change happened midway. Ultimately it was a recalibration season as the last vestiges of their plucky underdog existence were swallowed up once and for all.
Year two was when Durant returned... that was when everything was supposed to click. And yeah they did win 48 games. And they did knock the Boston Celtics out of the playoffs in five games in round one. But they were beaten 4-3 by the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks in a thrilling series with Kevin Durant playing out of his skin while Harden and Irving struggled with further injuries. At that stage the project didn’t look so rough. At that stage they seemed to be poised for something special. Then it all began to unravel.
There are so many what-ifs about those Brooklyn Nets now. What if they’d hired a better coach than Steve Nash? What if they’d been able to keep James Harden happy? What if they hadn’t had such a rotten run of injuries? What if Kyrie Irving had simply gotten his damn covid jab? What if they’d kept a blossoming Jarrett Allen instead of trading for Harden in the first place? What if Ben Simmons hadn’t been so emotionally shattered from his time in Philly that he can no longer even attempt a jump shot? What if they’d put their foot down from the start when their best players got too cocky? What if Kyrie Irving simply deleted all his social media accounts?
There are many different ways in which this experiment could have been a successful one... but the way it worked out saw them win just one playoff series over three full seasons with a 7-13 post-season record. Out of 280 regular season games, Durant played 129 and Irving played 148. A mere 74 of those games included both of them. If that were purely down to injuries then they’d still have had to make a call about moving forward or not... but as we know it was not all down to injuries.
Basically, they tried the blockbuster stuff and it all turned into a shambles, particularly over the last two seasons. Now Marks and his boss Joe Tsai have pivoted back to the old strategy instead. The one where they made sneaky moves and developed players from within. And you’ve gotta think that everyone around the franchise is probably quite relieved by that development.
Kyrie Irving went first. There’s been a lot of reporting about this and you never quite know what to believe (particularly when Kyrie’s involved). But one of the most important factors in this trade happened in the previous offseason. Kyrie was coming into the final year of his contract but the Nets straight up refused to give him a new one on the terms that he expected. Irving’s a weird bloke at the best of times and throughout his many self-inflicted dramas he seems to have missed the fact that he’s not the only victim involved. On the court he deserved the cash. Off the court he’d turned the Nets into a chaotic hellscape. You can’t separate those two things when negotiating new terms.
Then again, self-awareness has never been one of Kyrie Irving’s strongest characteristics...
Like, yeah bro, you were being tolerated. That’s exactly what was happening. They tolerated you because you’re really good at basketball and if that felt like a sign of disrespect then pretty sure Sean Marks could say the same thing back the other way right now (or at any point in the last three and a half years). Got to think he felt disrespected when Kyrie Irving spoke about “managing this franchise together alongside Joe [Tsai] and Sean [Marks]”. Got to think Steve Nash felt disrespected when Kyrie said: “I don’t really see us having a head coach”. Got to think a number of his teammates felt disrespected when Kyrie starting listing some names and not others when suggesting how the Nets might build their roster moving forward, that was way back in year one. Got to think the entire organisation felt disrespected when Kyrie went AWOL from the team without explaining it to anybody. You can’t expect it when you don’t give it, even if it wasn’t always intentional on Kyrie’s part. Again: self-awareness level zero.
Anyway, the Nets didn’t extend him so he took his one-year player option instead. That means that as it stands he’ll be a free agent at the end of the term. At least some level of negotiations continued through the season but eventually they got to where, about a week or so out from the trade deadline, it was abundantly clear to all parties that no new deal was gonna happen. So despite the fact that the Nets had looked absolutely fantastic this season in the games since Jacque Vaughn took over as head coach and prior to KD getting injured, Irving then upended any hope of turning that into a championship push by handing in a trade request.
Sean Marks was probably quite happy to receive that trade request too. He’d dug in his heels when Kevin Durant had asked out prior to the season, around the same time as Irving’s extension fell through, seeing no need to trade a disgruntled star who still had multiple years remaining on a contract he’d only signed in August 2021. Not unless a so-called Godfather offer came through. That didn’t happen and they were able to patch things up with Durant despite KD’s previous demands for both Marks and Nash to be fired. Marks outlasted him in Brooklyn, Nash did not.
With Kyrie on an expiring deal though... that was different. Also it was a chance to get rid of a bloke who was causing more headaches than he was worth (and for an All Star calibre player like KI, that’s a lot of headaches). Up stepped the Dallas Mavericks with a bid that included a 2029 unprotected first round pick, two future second round picks, and a pair of very useful players in Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith. Funnily enough, Dinwiddie had been traded away by the Nets back in 2021 - although they treated him right with a sign-and-trade that gave him a massive payrise on top of the very team-friendly terms he’d been performing far in excess of. Having said that, it was a heavily backloaded deal and now Sean Marks is left to drink his own poison with a bloke earning $20m+ for the next two seasons. Granted, they did just clear a heap of salary room.
That left the Nets in a slippery situation where they still had Kevin Durant, and therefore a good enough team to do some damage in the playoffs, but with no guarantee that KD was going to be happy with how things had gone down. He’d already asked for a trade prior to the season. They didn’t wait around for him to ask a second time. They knew that KD had a preference to go to the Phoenix Suns and they sorted him out in a hurry... netting four first round picks as well as Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson.
On the record Marks has said that they would have preferred not to trade Durant. Of course not... but as soon as Irving was outta there every other team with the capacity to do so would have been on the phones having a crack at getting Durant. And those teams probably all had a good idea where they stood thanks to KD’s previous trade request. Lots of negotiations would’ve picked up where they left off. The offers were going to be there. And this way the Nets get to make a clean break.
There’s been criticism that they didn’t get enough back for Durant... but that’s bonkers thinking. Sure, the Utah Jazz got four firsties and a pick-swap (as well as a bunch of middling/fringe players) in the Rudy Gobert trade but that’s missing a couple of key factors. One is that Durant is an injury prone 34 year old and no matter how brilliant he is that has to come into consideration. Two is that Mikal Bridges is better than any player the Jazz got back in return and probably better than most of the dudes that’ll be selected with those future firsts. Plus Johnson’s a decent talent too, the kind of guy who could thrive in a new system. Three is that the Wolves substantially overpaid for Gobert.
There was always and inkling that Sean Marks hadn’t finished dealing after the Kyrie trade. That Kevin Durant followed in an even bigger move was both surprising and also not surprising, in a strange way. Don’t overlook that they were able to flip Jae Crowder to Milwaukee soon after getting him in the Durant haul (Crowder had sat out the entire season with Phoenix, going on strike after a trade request that came after they tried to get him to play off the bench... it was very lame, at least everyone found a happy solution).
The trade deadline means that things’ll be pretty settled in Brooklyn for the rest of this season but you can absolutely guarantee that there’s a very funky offseason coming up. The Nets will be back active in the first round of the next college draft. They own Phoenix’s pick and they should have their own too. If you wanna get into the weeds of it then Houston has pick-swap rights with Brooky but given how the respective teams are tracking that’s a moot point. Then there’s also some funkiness about Philly’s pick which as it stands is reverting to Utah via Brooklyn however that’s annoyingly complicated so we’ll just see how the cards land on draft day.
They also gathered up five future second rounders in the Jae Crowder deal... but that doesn’t matter. You can literally just rock up on draft day and buy second rounders. Teams don’t necessarily sign the blokes that get picked there. Still, it’s better to have them than not.
The firsts are the ones that matter though and while they did cough up a few to Houston in the Harden trade (two firsts and three pick swaps, the first of those being the 2023 one) they’ve since taken six back from Phoenix and Dallas. Mostly future picks, and given the state of those franchises right now they’ll be lucky if any of them end up in the top twenty... but the thing about hoarding all those first round picks is that they’re not necessarily there to be used. Often future picks are most valuable as filler in future trades. They’re assets that can help you get over the line whenever and however the opportunity to improve the team arrives. Could be a player you love on draft day. Could be an available star from another team. You keep your ears to the ground, keep your eyes on the ball, and keep your feet ready to move in any direction.
Speaking of which, what type of (non-All Star) players are the most desired in the league? Three-point shooting wing defenders, of course. There’s not a single team in the NBA who couldn’t use at least one more of those. Well, the Nets roster is now absolutely chock-full of those exact blokes.
Seth Curry and Joe Harris are perennial top-ten blokes in three-point percentage while Royce O’Neal, Spencer Dinwiddie, and Mikal Bridges are all close to 40%. Dorian Finney-Smith is having a down season but shot 39.5% from deep last season (he was a sub-30 shooter when Dallas first took him on as a project player and has emerged into an excellent shooter thanks to solid coaching and development over the last five years). Yuta Watanabe has hit an insane 48.1% of his triples in limited minutes this term. Cam Johnson is a career 39.5% shooter from deep.
Meanwhile 21yo Cam Thomas, Brooklyn’s selection with the 27th overall pick in the 2021 draft, has gone bonkers lately with three straight 40+ scoring nights out of the blue right as the Kyrie speculation emerged. Perfect timing from that lad. Not to mention Patty Mills who’s on veteran bench minutes these days but still has a trusted jumper to go with his profound leadership.
There’s shooting for days in this roster. Of that lot Bridges, DFS, and O’Neal in particular are also superb defenders. They’ve already cashed in on Jae Crowder and as it stands only Seth Curry and Yuta Watanabe are coming off contract. As soon as the offseason begins and teams start planning ahead these Nets are going to be in a prime position to get down to business... whilst still having the depth and flexibility to retain the blokes they’re keen on.
It seems clear that the impetus for Brooklyn clamping down on the free reins they’d allowed KD and Kyrie was owner Joe Tsai, who signs the dotted lines on everyone’s pay-cheques and basically just got sick of the dramas. He’s given Sean Marks the green light to pivot the franchise in a different direction... and that suits Marksy nicely. His early days as Nets GM were littered with clever roster moves, steadily improving the team’s standing with little moves. From a starting point of having almost nothing to work with, no major draft picks and only two tradeable players (Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young), he got that team back into the playoffs within three years.
The bro knows what he’s doing... and he’s not starting from scratch this time. He’s got tradeable players/picks overflowing from his cup. This isn’t a reset to the beginning of the Marks Nets, it’s a reset to where they were immediately before they signed Durant and Irving. Forget the last three and a half years. They tried something and it didn’t work. Now they’ll try something else.
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