Rebuilding Nets still hanging in the middle

GM Marks addresses balance between patient approach and winning

July 17, 2018 By John Torenli, Sports Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle

After a busy summer of wheeling and dealing, Nets general manager Sean Marks addressed the local media Tuesday afternoon at the team’s HSS Training Center in Sunset Park. Eagle Photo by John Torenli

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If it were up to Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson, his coaching staff, the fans and the players themselves, the Brooklyn-based franchise would be competing for a playoff spot right now.

And they fully intend to do so once the opening tip goes up on the 2018-19 campaign.

But general manager Sean Marks knows that the team is still in the middle of its ongoing rebuilding and development project, one that he hopes will result in the Nets seriously vying for NBA titles in the not-too-distant future.

“Kenny and his staff are well aware of the expectations,” Marks noted during his press conference with the local media at the team’s HSS Training Center in Sunset Park on Tuesday afternoon.

“But at the end of the day, we’re not going to try to fast forward [in an attempt to improve our] wins and losses and take away our flexibility in the future.”

In other words, expect at least one more season of steady improvement Nets fans, but don’t get your hopes up for a playoff series at Barclays Center next spring.

Marks, who spent the summer acquiring and jettisoning players and draft picks to reshape a roster that made an eight-game improvement last season, admitted that he couldn’t put a finger on exactly when the Nets would go from getting ready to compete to actually being able to.

“I don’t know,” the lanky 42-year-old New Zealander with a wealth of NBA experience from his days as a player, assistant coach and team executive in San Antonio said.

“It could happen in a year from now. Things have changed a bit in the last three months, so we have a year to prepare.”

The changes have been plentiful since the Nets finished off a 28-54 campaign after going an NBA-worst 20-62 during Marks’ first full year at the helm.

Brooklyn has waved bye-bye to Jeremy Lin, Timofey Mozgov, Dante Cunningham, Nik Stauskas, Milton Doyle and Coney Island’s own Isaiah Whitehead while saying hello to Ed Davis, Kenneth Faried, Darrell Arthur and Shabazz Napier.

Marks also traded for and released Dwight Howard as part of the swap that got Mozgov out of town, helping to clear a potential $70 million windfall of cap space for the summer of 2019.

The 2019-20 season is the one Marks and most Nets fans are pointing to as the year the team pivots from one that is building to one that is in the hunt for an Eastern Conference title, something the franchise hasn’t achieved since reaching back-to-back NBA Finals in 2002-03.

That will be the summer Marks is on the hook to bring in enough talent to put this development project over the top in terms of seriously challenging for its first ever NBA title.

“There’s never a number of wins we need to reach this threshold and so forth,” Marks revealed. “I think you’ll see a group of guys that are hungry and have a lot to play for.

“I think when we first set out on this [rebuilding project] a couple of years ago, you want to be competitive, it’s a slow process but we’re still excited to add some of those pieces this year that will [enhance our future].”

D’Angelo Russell, Allen Crabbe, the newly re-signed Joe Harris, Spencer Dinwiddie and Jarrett Allen have all bought in to the Nets’ plan and improved under Atkinson’s watch.

Davis and Faried figure to give Brooklyn some interior toughness and Napier will likely see plenty of time off the bench in relief of Russell and Dinwiddie.

But as presently constituted, the Nets will likely be a team that can jump up into the 30 to 35-win category.

And Marks is done dealing for now.

“We have to see how this group plays together. But as it stands now, this is the group,” he said when asked if Nets fans could expect more activity from the front office during this sweltering summer.

“You’ve got to be careful with saying this is what we are going to do a year from now,” he added. “We look at various different ways to build with the ability to pivot. Obviously, the future cap space and draft picks we’ve been able to acquire gives us more tools in the tool box.”

Those tools are in good hands with Atkinson as he continues to display the type of player-development mastery that he was hired for.

Come next summer, however, the Nets need to show enough improvement on the court this coming season to lure the best available talent in the NBA to Downtown Brooklyn

Whether that’s Golden State’s Klay Thompson or Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard of San Antonio, Boston’s Kyrie Irving or Minnesota’s Jimmy Butler, Marks must deliver some game-changing talent to our fair borough.

“First and foremost, you look at players that fit in Brooklyn, fit in your culture and fit into what you are trying to do,” he noted.

How those players ultimately fit in, and which ones decide they want to be here, will depend on how well the current roster performs this coming season on the corners of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.

“I think it’s a big year for everybody,” Marks ceded. “It’s never going to be about one person. It’s about a team, a group of guys competing. I can’t tell you how it is going to unfold.”

Nothing But Net: Napier, who joins Davis and Crabbe as the latest Portland-to-Brooklyn transplant, spoke to the media for the first time as a Net on Tuesday. “I just felt like this was the place that was for me,” said the former two-time national champion at the University of Connecticut. “I felt like this was the perfect place. I’m figuring it out. When training camp starts. I just continue to be who I am and come in and compete every day. Once the ball is in the air, we are going to figure that out. I’m excited for it.”