Sean Marks signed his termination papers Tuesday.
No, he didn’t resign, although he might’ve been able to salvage whatever professional dignity he has left if he had. But the general manager will be the next scapegoat to be pushed off the Nets’ ever-splintering gangplank. He has to be, if only because of the logic of professional sports.
Rule 1: An owner can’t fire himself — even though Joe Tsai is tied at the hip to Marks, and so everything Marks says publicly clearly comes with Tsai’s stamp of approval.
Rule 2: You can’t fire the players. And the fact is the players Marks chose to empower have put him in this situation. The players — specifically Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant — pressured him to stab Kenny Atkinson in the back. The players made Marks pick DeAndre Jordan over Jarret Allen, and then forced him to get rid of Allen and Caris LeVert — now two-fifths of an electric Cavaliers’ lineup — in order to acquire James Harden.
Irving is the one who said once Steve Nash was hired: “I really don’t see us having a coach.” And it was Durant who, after demanding a trade, replaced that with an ultimatum: either Nash goes or I go. They may be the only people less-qualified to be NBA GMs than Marks.
So on Tuesday, the day Nash was mercifully given his walking papers, when Marks said — with a straight face — “The players weren’t consulted” … yeah. There are statements that are so ridiculous that you can’t even qualify them as lies, just absurdities.
Someday, and probably someday soon, Tsai is going to take a good, hard look at what Marks has done here — from assembling a team that no longer fits together to hiring and firing a procession of coaches, to allowing the latest controversy that now engulfs the team to spin out of control — and realize what’s long been obvious to anyone who’s even remotely paid attention to the Nets.
This is a fiasco, all of it on Marks’ watch.
And that’s before the Nets make official what seems to be an all-but-done deal: hiring suspended Celtics coach Ime Udoka, which would allow Marks to retire the trophy for Worst Reading of the Room, All Time.
His star player, Irving, is still embroiled in a controversy of his own doing, tweeting a link to a viciously anti-Semitic movie (which he deleted, though he’s yet to apologize for it) and now he is close to hiring a coach exiled by the Celtics for sexual harassment? This would be laughable if it wasn’t so pitiable.
Nobody questions Udoka’s talent as a coach — he did finish two games shy of an NBA title in his first year, after all — but ask yourself this: would the Celtics just let him go — to a conference rival no less — for nothing if they were at all second-guessing the severity of the transgression? Would Udoka have accepted the punishment as meekly as he did?
And, most relevant of all, there is this:
Whose judgment do you trust? The Celtics or the Nets?
The answer to that is a more one-sided rout than when the teams met in the playoffs last year, a 4-0 Celtics whitewash.
Marks’ train wreck of a press conference Tuesday was highlighted when asked about the Irving situation, and why the Nets have ignored the venom of angry voices outraged that there’s been no punishment meted out to Irving. Remarkably, this is what Marks said about that: “We are involved with the [Anti-Defamation League] getting their advice.”
And then the money shot: “Both sides need to understand each other.”
Both sides? Really? What exactly does the ADL have to understand about Irving, who tweeted a link to a movie that cites a long-refuted-as-fabricated quote — that refuting coming from the ADL itself! — within the first 20 minutes that claims the Holocaust was a hoax? If Marks merely misspoke, he should be fired at once for so badly misrepresenting something so obvious.
If he really believes that anyone other than Irving needs to be educated about this, or more cynically if what he’s really begging for is for the ADL to give the Nets a free pass on this?
Then he shouldn’t only be fired, but Adam Silver should make it a mission that he’s never entrusted with a position of responsibility in his league ever again.
It has been a never-ending spitshow with Marks, from the start. He tipped his hand when he so effortlessly allowed Atkinson to be tossed overboard just before the pandemic hit in 2020. But it’s been a nonstop blooper reel ever since, lowlighted by Tuesday.
First he fired the coach rather than discipline the player, which called to mind Jerry Tarkanian’s classic — and brilliant — old line: “The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky it’s going to give Cleveland State two more years’ probation.” Marks was so “empathetic” — his word — of the Irving situation that he retrieved his trusty stiletto and sent another coach on his way.
Soon enough, it’ll be his turn. Can’t fire the owner. Can’t fire the players. And even Marks can’t keep firing coaches. Soon enough, he’ll be the one on the gangplank. And he’ll have earned every step.
