Well before Kyrie Irving was ruled out for the remainder of the 2019-20 season, the Brooklyn Nets point guard made some comments about the team’s roster. And Irving had a lot to say.
The comment that caught the most attention was “it’s pretty glaring we need one more piece or two more pieces that will compliment myself, KD [Kevin Durant], DJ [DeAndre Jordan], GT [Garrett Temple], Spence [Dinwiddie], Caris [LeVert], and we’ll see how that evolves.”
Even at that point, Irving had been sidelined for a lot of Brookly’s games. So, his timing wasn’t the best.
Then Irving was singling out specific players, while also omitting names like Joe Harris, Jarrett Allen and Taurean Prince.
At the crux of it all, Irving was trying to play the role of Nets general manager, which is Sean Marks’ job.
But Brooklyn’s GM doesn’t mind Irving chiming in. On Monday, he explained why on WFAN’s “Joe & Evan“:
I’m absolutely not worried about that at all. For me, I love the fact that our players have ownership in this. Ky and Kevin and the rest of the guys that have all signed on here and are a part of this, they hope to build this. And they hope to build something sustainable and something that not only they can carry on, but that is long-lasting for the borough. I always take a select handful of player’s opinions in terms of how we can build this. We’ve done this since Day 1, gather their thoughts. Because these guys know the players better than anybody else. So we’ll say, hey, this is what we’re looking at, what do you think? They’ll be brutally honest because they’ve got to go play with those guys. I think it’s important to weigh their opinions from time to time, and we certainly do that.
All that being said, Marks also expressed that he and Irving have not discussed anything related to roster building yet.