The Brooklyn Nets came into the 2024-25 NBA season with the idea of player development and evaluating some of the younger players on the roster in the first year of the rebuild. Brooklyn finished the season with a 26-56 record and while the team’s performance in terms of wins and losses was nothing to write home about, that didn’t stop some of the media from recognizing the leader of the rebuild.
The NBA recently released the voting results for the 2024-25 NBA Executive of the Year, showing that Sam Presti of the Oklahoma City Thunder won the award. All told, most of the votes for the award went to Presti, Koby Altman of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Trajan Langdon of the Detroit Pistons, and Rafael Stone of the Houston Rockets, all teams that made the playoffs.
What was interesting to see was that Nets general manager Sean Marks received the eighth-most votes, tying him with Danny Ainge of the Utah Jazz. As noted above, Brooklyn finished with the sixth-worst record in the league, meaning that they will have to beat the odds to end up with the first overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft and the right to select Duke forward Cooper Flagg.
Prior to the beginning of the season, Marks and company traded Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks in exchange for multiple first-round picks to turbocharge the rebuild. Not only that, but Marks also turned around and made a trade with the Rockets to get some of their own draft picks back so that Brooklyn could move forward knowing that they have control over their own picks for the next few years.
Along the way, Marks made interesting moves like re-signing Trendon Watford, signing center Nic Claxton to a four-year, $97 million deal, and trading for Ziaire Williams, among other moves. While the Nets surprised many by standing pat at the trade deadline, they did make two moves during the year that put them in a better position to get better draft picks by trading Dennis Schroder to the Golden State Warriors and Dorian Finney-Smith to the Los Angeles Lakers.