February 17 analysis<\/a> of all 30 NBA front offices on Gozlan\u2019s \u201cThird Apron\u201d podcast (starting at about 42:00 in) but wound up going more in depth. That analysis was published coincidentally on the 10th anniversary of Marks hiring by the Nets. It ranked the Nets F.O. 15th. Quinn has admitted, including in talking with Gozlan, that he now thinks Marks deserves even a higher grade, that his analysis may have been colored by pushback he received after ranking Marks 17th last year! Gozlan said that he had voted for Marks as Executive of the Year in 2024 based mainly on the biggest off-shoot of the deal, the subsequent trade to Mikal Bridges to the Knicks!<\/p>\n\u201cThey have held on to their players throughout good offers in search of great ones and that has worked out very very well for them. Like how many offers did they get for Mikal Bridges that would have been fine. Like if they had traded him to Memphis for all those picks (in the aftermath of the KD trade) that would have been a decent trade. I think the Rockets came in with an offer at one point. I don\u2019t know what it was. They waited and got the historic haul for Mikal Bridges, that now looks like an awesome trade for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Adrian Wojnarowski reported at the 2024 trade deadline, the Nets had offers of four or five firsts that they turned down. Brian Lewis subsequently wrote that the Rockets offer mentioned by Quinn would have retuned two firsts and other assets to Brooklyn and there was a rumor that the Trailblazers would\u2019ve offered the rights to Scoot Henderson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey waited on Cam Johnson too. It might have cost them draft position in 2025. I think Egor Demin looks good. I\u2019d be very excited to have him. Maybe they could have gotten higher up in that lottery, who\u2019s to say. BUT they get an unprotected pick for Cam Johnson plus Michael Porter Jr. who\u2019s better than Cam Johnson. That\u2019s a killer trade\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you can fault them for holding on to their guys. It\u2019s worked out for them,\u201d Quinn added. (One league source told ND that indeed that policy of waiting for a better deal has been a criticism of Marks. Quinn also said that the Nets have succeeded in some lesser deals areas have some big if less tangible assets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve done pretty well on the margins. Day\u2019Ron Sharpe is one of the better back-up values in the NBA,\u201d the CBS Sports writer added, speaking of the two-year, $12.5 million contract Sharpe signed last summer. The second year of that contract is a team option making it even more favorable to Nets.<\/p>\n
\u201cJordi Fernandez … awesome coaching hire,\u201d Quinn added. \u201cI think that\u2019s going to manifest in the enxt couple of years. And by the way we don\u2019t think about them because they\u2019re not the Knicks, but they ARE in New York, they ARE a big market team. Guys want to live there. By the way, I don\u2019t know if casual fans know this, when you play for the Knicks, you don\u2019t live in New York City. Their practice facility is in in Westchester, They\u2019re an hour away. When you play for Brooklyn, your practice facility in sin Brooklyn. You get to live in New York It\u2019s a very desirable place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
His bottom line: \u201cThey\u2019re loaded with draft picks right now. They\u2019re in an awesome position. They\u2019re going to be good again in two or three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gozlan echoed Quinn in many ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had Sean Marks as my big vote for Executive of the Year mainly because of the Bridges trade,\u201d he noted. \u201cI thought that if those rumors were true that the Nets declined four picks for Mikal Bridges from the Grizzlies in 2023 as soon as soon as they got him. If that was true, I thought it was they declined these trades. and yet to worked out.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re right. They are so good at valuing players on the market. and knowing how long that value could sustain I really can\u2019t think of a situation where that lost value on a guy although maybe if you want to say Kyrie.That was Kyrie destroying his own value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quinn countered by arguing that the Nets \u201clost a ton of value with Harden.\u201d (Internally the company line on the deal centered on Harden-for-Ben Simmons is that neither the Nets nor the 76ers won that trade.)<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an organization you have to bear some blame for what went wrong for Kyrie and Durant and Harden, like when a player quites on you like James Harden did, that\u2019s a red flag,\u201d Quinn argued, reiterating the single biggest criticism of the Nets front office, its inability, at least in the hires before Fernandez, to choose the right coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the Steve Nash coaching hire. I think it showed some promise early. They just thought we\u2019re not going to need an experienced coach. Oh now, you did need an experienced coach,\u201d said Quinn. \u201cI think they let the players have a little bit too much control over the roster and therefore there was nobody to put their hands on the wheel when things went south. Trading Jarrett Allen to appease Kyrie and Kevin Durant? Not looking great.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there are some organizational things they should be dinged for but mostly I\u2019m thinking I should have ranked them a little bit higher. and maybe let backlash from previous rankings get to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when you think of all the things they do on the margins \u2026 they\u2019re excellent at free agency, not just getting KD and Kyrie, but getting all these good players to come on the minimum. There\u2019s so many good assets that they good in the buyout market,\u201d he said, referring primarily to Blake Griffin and Lamarcus Aldridge, even getting Paul Milsap and Goran Dragic,\u201c admitting \u201dthey really didn\u2019t work out.\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cTheyre pretty good at the draft,\u201d Gozlan, editor of capsheets.com, said ticking off the 20 and 30-something values they got: Jarrett Allen, Caris LeVert, Nic Claxton, Day\u2019Ron Sharpe, even contending that while Cam Thomas wound up wanting out, they got good value for him at No. 27.\u201c<\/p>\n
Gozlan\u2019s one big criticism is big contracts. Not so much superstars but stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cNegotiating below maximum contracts leaves a lot to be desired,\u201d he added. \u201cThe Claxton deal is okay. The Joe Harris deal was pretty bad. the D\u2019Andre Jordan deal was pretty bad. The one deal that I thought was a pretty good value was the Dinwiddie one from like six seven years ago when they got him at the midlevel at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gozlan said he also has questions about the 2025 Draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe strategy going into last year\u2019s draft is pretty hard to evaluate,\u201d he said of the five first round picks. \u201cIt just seems so weird that they took all these picks. They don\u2019t have one pick that has real value. You can\u2019t point to anyone there so far that can really turn things around. It\u2019s still early to see if anyone there that can at least become an All-Star. But that\u2019s the kind of thing if they can get only one guy to really pop, that would set them back.\u201d<\/p>\n
He, like Quinn, pointed to the failure of the \u201cBig Three\u201d and still less-than-fulsome explanation of what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did all those stars just lose faith in the organization. and we still don\u2019t know what it really is. it just imploded \u2026 There\u2019s clearly more than went wrong with that team and until we see them turn the corner with a new group i think it\u2019s reasonable to hold it against them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quinn agreed. \u201cThere\u2019s clearly more to the story about what went wrong for that team and until we see them turn the corner with that team, the new group, I think it\u2019s reasonable to hold that against them BUT if in two or three years, they\u2019re really good, it\u2019s going to pretty easy to push them up because we can just look back at it and say, Kevin Durant has had a checkered few years since he left and Kyrie is Kyrie. It speaks for itself. Harden is now four trades and multiple trades since then. It may have been a weird cocktail of personalities.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the immediate future, Quinn and Gozlan debated whether the Nets exchange of first round picks with the Rockets the same night of the Bridges trade was worth it. In that deal, Marks retrieved the 2025 and 2026 first round picks they lost in the trade that brought Harden to Brooklyn. In return, the Nets gave up picks and swaps between 2027 and 2029 they got from the KD and Kyrie deals.<\/p>\n
Quinn was more the skeptic, asking if \u201cthe lottery balls they got in 2026 was worth the assets they gave up in the Rockets trade that they ultimately had to give up just to get a pick in the 2026 lottery. I think that\u2019s something that\u2019s going to have play out over time and if they jump up to No. 1 or No. 2, yeah of course The 2026 draft is maybe so good, maybe it\u2019s still worth it but I\u2019d be holding my breath on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gozlan sees that trade and the Bridges trade as \u201cone big trade,\u201d and believes the Nets \u201chad to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you still have to do it knowing what we knew at the time that the Nets were so bad in 2024 and with the Suns \u2026 no one thought they\u2019d implode as bad as they did.\u201d he said. \u201cI just think it\u2019s better to have control of your draft. That trade doesn\u2019t work without the Mikal Bridges trade. You really have to factor that in as one big mega-trade because the other element is that they\u2019ve got all these Knicks picks in the future. They have control over their destiny and that could come into play whether they get some good picks of value or maybe they could leverage some type of trade in the future with the Knicks.\u201d<\/p>\n
We are approaching what Jordi Fernandez confidently described as, \u201cthe summer of our lives\u201d and what they do in the off-season is going to tell the tale of just where Marks will stand when Quinn and Gozlan speak again a year from now. Internally, the Nets seem confident in what they have built and where they\u2019re headed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It may not have seemed so in the early hours of February 9, 2023, but the Nets\u2019 trade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,6,671,39762],"class_list":["post-653454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn-nets","tag-basketball","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-nets","tag-brooklynnets","tag-nba","tag-nets","tag-nets-features"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116213023709363535","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}