It has been almost five calendar years since the Brooklyn Nets hired Sean Marks as their new general manager, and whether the Nets win an NBA title this year, next year, or not at all under Marks, there is no denying he has done a tremendous job digging out of the hole left by his predecessor.
And to think – he almost never got the chance, and wouldn’t have if not for a push from several people both inside and outside the organization.
In an exclusive written for Forbes, former ESPN Nets beat writer Mike Mazzeo gives a quasi-oral history of how the Nets came to hire Marks in February 2016, and the first big takeaway is that, despite Brooklyn’s admiration of “the Spurs way,” it was highly-regarded exec Bryan Colangelo who was the favorite for the job the whole way.
The whole way, that is, until Marks interviewed with former Nets exec Irina Pavlova and consultant Mike Forde, who got to know then-Spurs assistant coach Marks well during the 2014 season while serving as an outside advisor to San Antonio GM R.C. Buford.
Forde told Mazzeo the search committee was “blown away” by Marks, with Pavlova adding that “he knew his (stuff).”
“What impressed me about Sean was not only was he a hardworking guy, but he also had a high IQ and an innate ability to work with different departments,” Forde also said. “When RC promoted him through the ranks (to assistant GM), I thought it made him a tremendous asset as a future GM because he could also see the NBA world through the coaching paradigm.”
However, as Mazzeo explains, Marks was one of seven candidates to interview in person with the committee and then-owner Mikhail Prokhorov but while he won over Pavlova and Forde, Dmitry Razumov – then Prokhorov’s top deputy – was a Colangelo guy, and perhaps had a secret meeting with John Calipari as well.
Ultimately, as explained in the piece, Marks’ five-year plan, combined with praise from all around the league, outweighed the negative of Marks’ lack of experience – and he was hired, but not before he was almost lost a second time over salary concerns.
Of course, Marks’ original four-year deal has since expired and his contract as GM has since been significantly increased…but to think, the KD/Kyrie era almost never came to be, and could’ve been, as Mazzeo writes, a Colangelo rebuild around Thad Young and Brook Lopez – two players Marks dealt within 18 months of taking over.
For a detailed look into how the Sean Marks era came to be and twice almost wasn’t, check out Mazzeo’s full piece for Forbes.
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