NEW YORK — The Brooklyn Nets have made it through another NBA trade deadline and while it looked like no moves were going to be made, Brooklyn eventually got going. The organization ended up trading away Spencer Dinwiddie and Royce O’Neale while bringing in Dennis Schroder. Nets general manager Sean Marks spoke on what the trade deadline is like.
“These days are are never easy,” Marks said during Thursday’s 118-95 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. As a result of Thursday’s trade, the Nets said goodbye to Dinwiddie, O’Neale, and Harry Giles III after he was waived following the organization trading Dinwiddie to the Toronto Raptors. Marks seemed disappointed in the trades, especially when it came to Dinwiddie, but said that’s the business.
“I look forward to those opportunities, but at the same time, it comes with people leaving your Nets family and that’s never the easiest,” Marks said. “It’s been really special to have Royce and Harry and Spencer here for the times they were here and they’re fine, young gentlemen. We wish them nothing but the best.”
One of the priorities for Marks and the Nets was maintaining future flexibility as the team goes through this rebuild. “I think we go into these days always thinking about future flexibility, trying to maintain some some level of sustainability when we’re looking at how’s the team looking this year, how’s it going to look in 6 months time from now, how’s it going to look in three, four years,” Marks said.
As it stands, the Nets are in a position where they will be trying to rebuild after the Big 3 era officially ended last season while trying to provide a winning product on the court. Despite this goal, Brooklyn is 20-31 heading into Friday’s games and currently stands on the outside looking in with regards to the play-in tournament.
It has been know that the Nets, like most rebuilding teams, will be looking to find their next star player or two so that they can get back to their winning ways. Marks did not give a concrete timeline of how long he expects this rebuild to take as he said that things could change depending on what players become available in the future.
As expected, there is a sentiment within the Nets fanbase that the Nets currently do not have a direction and are just stuck somewhere in the middle of a rebuild and competing until they figure it out. Marks essentially called on those fans to trust him like they did when he first became the GM almost a decade ago.
“I would hope those fans seven or eight years ago was sitting here going ‘they probably didn’t really know what the direction was then.’ I have utmost faith in this group of players and this staff to go out there and put a sustainable product on the floor,” Marks explained.
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