It's time for Sean Marks to get Nets moving in right direction
Nets general manager Sean Marks looks on before a game between the Nets and the Utah Jazz at Barclays Center on Jan. 29, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Sean Marks is unusually tall for a general manager and has a distinctive accent for added color. But the ordinary rules of running a sports franchise still apply to him.
Those include winning, above all else, or at least giving fans reason to believe their team is pointed in some sort of coherent direction.
Marks has accomplished neither of those things in his eight years with the Nets, most recently demonstrated by Monday’s firing of coach Jacque Vaughn.
Don’t cry for Vaughn. He will be fine, having signed a new long-term contract just last year and having left with his dignity and personable demeanor intact, even if his coaching rep took a hit.
The writing was on the wall for Vaughn when the Nets lost by 50 points to Boston on Valentine’s Day night and their best player, Mikal Bridges, seemed to take a few shots at the team’s preparation, or lack thereof.
“You [reporters] watched the game,” Bridges said. “You’re probably sitting there like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ So it’s tough.”
For those not familiar with modern NBA-to-English translation: “So long, Coach.”
The low point this season was the Nets infamously resting most of their key players in a Dec. 27 loss to the Bucks at Barclays Center. They are 6-18 since then (including that loss).
But this is not about Vaughn, whose impact on the franchise was such that he should have no trouble walking around Brooklyn unrecognized by most.
This is about Vaughn’s immediate supervisor.
Marks now is on the clock, in the sense that a person who has slept through his alarm and is two hours late for his job as an air traffic controller is on the clock.
It’s time, Sean.
The NBA’s only 6-10 GM from New Zealand has hired and fired three coaches: Northport’s Kenny Atkinson, Steve Nash and now Vaughn.
And he has gone from blowing up Atkinson’s feel-good, overachieving Nets to the feel-bad, underachieving Nets of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden and finally to a mediocre team that inspires few feelings at all.
Even complaining about Ben Simmons is no fun anymore.
The Nets have won one playoff series under Marks. One! That’s half as many as the Nets won when Lou Carnesecca was their coach in the ABA days of the early 1970s.
These are things that presumably concern owner Joseph Tsai, who as far as we know is going to allow Marks at least one more hire to get this right.
Getting better players would be a good start, and that starts with a coach who might help attract high-end players. Easier said than done.
Marks faces an added burden that his Knicks counterpart, Leon Rose, does not. Rose has to win, too, but the Nets must market themselves to keep selling tickets and television ratings as they forever fight a battle for relevance in the metropolitan area.
That means going after an established coach for whom stars are interesting in playing, but not the sort of stars who produced the self-destructive ruin of the Big 3 era.
It will be a tricky balance, and perhaps impossible. But in theory, there is no reason for players not to be interested in the Nets, a franchise with a modern building, a hip borough and plenty of upside after decades of disappointment.
Marks has given fans every reason to doubt that he is the man for that job. But for now, Vaughn is the fall guy and Marks still is in charge.
Marks called firing Vaughn “an incredibly difficult decision.” The next one for Tsai shouldn’t be.
Fine, let Marks hire another guy if you must. But there can’t be another guy after that.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
