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As the man running basketball operations in Brooklyn, Sean Marks made more hard pivots and broke more ankles on crossovers than Kyrie Irving ever could. So Kevin Durant finally did this week what he wanted to do over the summer.
He told Marks that enough was enough. The second time around, Durant told the general manager that he is done with the Nets as surely as Tom Brady is done with football. “For good,” in other words.
Marks responded by sending Durant to Phoenix a few days after he sent Irving to Dallas, ending an era of big-name acquisition and small-game results in Hindenburg form. Starting in 2019, the Nets acquired Durant, Irving, James Harden and Ben Simmons.
Today they have one playoff series victory and one catastrophe of a championship plan to show for it.
But that doesn’t mean the Nets should be out of the business of superstar recruitment. Owner Joe Tsai is reported to be worth more than $8 billion, and if he is serious about building a program with credible title aspirations, he’ll throw big cash at Warriors general manager Bob Myers, who is scheduled to become a free agent at season’s end.
And Tsai needs to get word to Myers about his interest ASAP. That’s the way the NBA works, the way it has always worked. Everybody tampers. Everybody whispers to invested third parties and dealmakers before contracts are officially expired.
Everybody determined to hire the best available people, anyway.
Myers has won four championships in the past eight seasons. He has done everything with Golden State that Marks said he would do with Brooklyn. If Warriors ownership is crazy enough to let Myers walk by not giving him the money and years he wants to stay, Tsai has to be right there with the best offer to hire him away.
