Chris Milholen - Sports Illustrated's Fan Nation
Nets' GM Sean Marks Details Why Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving Era 'Didn't Work'
The last 13 months for the Brooklyn Nets have been packed with chaos, controversies, unfilled championship hopes, key injuries, and a total of three superstars forcing their way out of the borough.
The organization has finally flipped the page and is back in a rebuild. In a crowded interview room in the bowels of Barclays Center, Nets general manager Sean Marks spoke to reporters on Thursday evening to break down the disappointment and the future.
Brooklyn's GM declined to call the KD-Kyrie era a failure. Instead, he explained that the organization did its best to reach championship heights but in the end, it 'didn't work.'
“I think it would be easy to look in from the outside and you know, honestly, I look at it internally and say well, it didn't work. Let's be honest there," said Marks on the KD-Kyrie era of Nets basketball. "You know, we did not reach the full potential of where we thought we'd could get to; our hopes and honest beliefs. But again, you know, I look back and we've done a lot of thinking and soul searching on this and we said, well, you know, we did everything we possibly could to maximize this organization's potential to have ourselves in the conversation for a championship. And that's all we've done."
It was definitely not an easy decision for Marks, who admitted he felt sad after pulling the trigger and sending Durant to the Phoenix Suns, to close the door on a struggling championship chase. On the other side, the Nets GM explained that the move allows the newest Suns superstar to pursue a championship while Brooklyn has a solid foundation to begin their next chapter.
"At the same time, to be able to move Kevin to a place where he will have success and they will enter into their championship window," he said. "For us to bring back these two players [Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson] in that particular trade and the draft assets, that gives us a clear pathway now to continue to rebuild and maybe not set the reset button so to speak because we have a group in there that's very competitive and want to get out there and want to compete at the highest level, but this is this has given us a clear pathway on how to continue this.”
After Irving demanded his trade ticket out of Brooklyn, it served as the catalyst for Durant to follow in his footsteps out the Barclays Center doors. The Nets GM declined to comment on whether that was the case. He'll leave that to Durant to answer that question in a Suns uniform. Instead, he praised the former cornerstone of the franchise for the fingerprints he's left on the group.
"I don’t want to speak to Kevin for one. I don't think that wouldn't be right for me to explain why he's asked out or if that was anything to do with Kyrie, right,?' Marks said. "I mean, that's completely on him to sort of answer and to sort of factor in, and he’ll get this opportunity to answer that.
"I think, more importantly, is to realize what Kevin did for this franchise and to thank him and, you know, I mean, without a doubt, he'll be missed. We’ll feel his presence here because when he brought to them, whether it was the locker room or the practice facility, that work ethic, and that competitive spirit. I've honestly, I've never seen anything like it. So I mean, I think that's contagious. You know, it'll linger here with many of our guys for sure for a long time."
The Nets GM also declined to speak on Irving's departure from the player's point of view. He'll also give the new Dallas Mavericks superstar his own platform to make comments.
"I don't want to speak for Kyrie and how he was thinking the whole way through here. I think when you know, you get to a point like we are now and it didn't work," Marks stated. "I think we have to internally look at you know, did we do everything we could have done, could we have done more sure, but I think that's on everybody, that's on the individual, that's on the team, that's on the organization. I don't want to speak for Kyrie and I wish nothing but he and his family all the best."
Brooklyn will be expecting the debuts of Bridges and Johnson on Saturday night vs. former disgruntled Net James Harden and the Philadelphia 76ers. Overall, the organization moves forward with goals of becoming a playoff team, making some noise in the Eastern Conference, and capitalizing on the NBA Drafts for years to come.
“My goal here, and our goal is from ownership all the way down, is to put something out on the floor that everybody can be proud of," Marks said looking forward. "You can see consistent effort, you can see availability, and you can see competitive spirit.”
