Brooklyn Nets hire Sean Marks as general manager

The Brooklyn Nets have hired Sean Marks as their general manager, the team announced in a news release Thursday morning.

“After an exhaustive vetting process, we are delighted to have Sean as our General Manager,” Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov said in a statement. “

Marks is the assistant general manager for the San Antonio Spurs and has an extensive background as a player, coach and front-office executive, and that diversity impressed the Nets.

“His experience on the court, in coaching and management gives him a 360 degree view of the job at hand,” Prokhorov said. “His background helping to build one of the greatest teams in the NBA gives him an unparalleled frame of reference. And he impressed us all with his vision, his values, his personality and his enthusiasm for the club.

“The vote to select him from an incredible list of talent was unanimous. We welcome Sean into our Nets family and look forward to his strong leadership and independent thinking as we build our own success story.”

Marks is now responsible for building a front-office staff and hiring a coach. “I look forward to the challenge of creating a unified culture and building a winning team,” Marks said in a statement.

One possible coaching candidate is Spurs assistant coach Ettore Messina, who coached CSKA Moscow when Prokhorov was involved with the Russian power. Messina was born in Italy and spent much of his coaching career in Europe. He is often mentioned as the man who could be the first European-born head coach in the NBA. He was also an assistant for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Former Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau is another possibility, and he will come with a high price tag – not that the Nets can’t afford it.

Former Cleveland coach David Blatt could get a chance to restart his NBA coaching career following this season’s dismissal. Blatt was the coach of the Russian national team and has coached two professional teams in Russia.

After naming a coach, Marks has the difficult job of building a roster that can compete. Shortly after Prokhorov bought the team, he tried to build a contender by throwing money at it, and the Nets never advanced beyond the second-round despite high payrolls.

Now, Prokhorov is saying the right things. In an open letter to Nets fans posted on Yahoo’s The Vertical, Prokhorov wrote, “We had been told that you can’t buy a championship. Truer words were never spoken.”

He also wrote the Nets are “now poised to refocus our efforts on disciplined analysis and planning.”

Behind closed doors, Prokhorov and his staff are telling people that, too. But there is concern from some that those are nothing but bromides.

If there is full commitment from ownership to build the right way and Marks has autonomy, the Nets can be attractive. They play in a great arena in Brooklyn, just opened a new practice facility and will spend.

But it won’t be easy either. While the Nets have money to spend in free agency this summer, so do several other teams and there are not often high-quality players to equal all the money that can be spent. Some teams will miss out on top free agents, and the Nets’ 14-40 record isn’t appealing.

Who is Marks? The 40-year-old Marks was born in New Zealand (became a U.S. citizen in 2007) and played college basketball at California where he majored in political science. The 6-10 Marks was drafted No. 44 by the New York Knicks in the second round of the 1998 draft and immediately traded to Toronto. He carved out a 12-year career playing for Toronto, Miami, San Antonio, Phoenix, New Orleans and Portland. He missed one season due to a knee injury.

Most of that time was spent on the bench. He appeared in just 230 games and played in more than 29 games in a season just once. In his most productive season in 2008-09, he played in 60 games and averaged 3.2 points and 3.1 rebounds in 14 minutes per game.

He also played for New Zealand in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and at the 2002 FIBA world championship.

But it’s obvious he studied the game and wanted to remain in basketball following his playing career. His final NBA season was in 2010-11, and the Spurs hired him in 2012 as their director of basketball operations and general manager of their D-League team in Austin.

The married father of four was named assistant coach in 2013 and named assistant general manager in 2014, and as it happens with products of the Spurs environment, he became a sought-after executive.