Nets GM Sean Marks admits 'we did not reach the full potential' of Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving era
Brooklyn Nets general manager Sean Marks opened his team's post-Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving era by stating the obvious: The Durant-Irving era did not work as hoped.
The Nets began their rebuild at this year's trade deadline by granting Irving's trade request and dealing him to the Dallas Mavericks, then shocked everyone early Thursday morning with a blockbuster deal that sent Durant to the Phoenix Suns. The pair of moves officially closed the book on a partnership that began in 2019 and ended up winning one playoff series total.
When asked if the undertaking was a failure, Marks said it's easy for outsiders to say it didn't work out ... before conceding the whole thing didn't work out.
Via The Athletic's Mike Vorkunov:
"I think it would be easy to look in from the outside — and honestly I look at it internally — and say, well, it didn't work. Let's be honest there. We did not reach the full potential of where we thought we can get to. Our hopes and, honestly, beliefs. But again, I look back and we've done a lot of thinking and soul searching on this and we said, well, 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, and we've shown that we've built this team up twice.
"I don't need to go back to what it was but build it up twice and have a team that I think we could look back and say, 'Look, they have a chance. They have a chance.' It didn't work. Some of that is through things we can control, something through things that we can't control. But at the end of the day now we're focused on this pathway right now. For us to look back and say 'What if? What good?' I mean, we're certainly going to debrief and go back on like we have done to be quite frank over the last couple of years when we had misses like we all do."
Marks still wished Durant the best on his next attempt at a super-team:
"This gives Kevin an opportunity to go in and continue on that quest for a championship in Phoenix as their window opens up," Marks said.
As things stand now, the Nets are built around the likes of Mikal Bridges, Spencer Dinwiddie and Ben Simmons, with some potentially fruitful draft picks down the line.
There are worse future outlooks in the NBA, but it is definitely not what Nets fans envisioned when they first learned that Durant and Irving would try to build a super-team in Brooklyn. That 3 1/2-year span was defined by Durant's injuries, Irving's controversies, James Harden's one-year stay and the rise and fall of Steve Nash.
Whether or not that falls on Marks and the Nets' other decision-makers probably depends on your perspective when it comes to Irving.
