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. Let Myers try to build something special with all the draft picks the Nets acquired in recent days as they threw up their hands and surrendered. 

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This isn’t personal, just business. In fact, there is no second-guessing of Marks’ choice to clear the cap space and close the deals on Durant and Irving in the summer of 2019. Even if they had some concerns about the point guard after he had walked out on LeBron James before walking out on the Celtics, the Nets had to take him as Durant’s chosen sidekick. 

They had to do everything to land KD. Every organization would’ve done the same thing. Every organization would’ve waited a season for Durant’s torn Achilles to heal, and then hoped he returned to the same level he reached while helping the Warriors win back-to-back titles. 

But Marks lost his way in the championship chase, giving too much personnel power to his franchise players. He replaced Kenny Atkinson with the ill-equipped Steve Nash, dealt away the future for James Harden and later dealt away the unhappy Harden to Philly for the perpetually unavailable Simmons. 

Swept by Boston in the first round, dismayed by all the Nets chaos as his former Golden State teammates were busy winning another ring, Durant eventually told Tsai that he wanted to be dealt if Marks and Nash weren’t fired. 

“I want to be in a place that’s stable, and trying to build a championship culture, and I had some doubts about that,” Durant said after he rescinded his trade demand. “And I voiced them to Joe, and we moved forward from there.” 

After sitting next to Nash in May and admitting that the Nets’ culture “isn’t what it quite was” and that they needed to get back to acquiring gritty, resilient and selfless players, Marks fired his coach seven games into the season. He replaced him with Jacque Vaughn, one of the few moves the GM actually got right. 

Irving and Durant just forced their way out regardless, leaving the past seven and a half months in Brooklyn looking like this: 

Kyrie opts in. 

KD opts out. 

KD opts in. 

Kyrie opts out. 

KD opts out. 

Unbelievable. Throw in the endless Irving controversies and absences, and it all summons another line from that May presser. “At the end of the day,” Marks said, “the buck stops here.” 

Yes it does. After seven years on the job, Marks hasn’t earned another fresh start. He made one last mistake this week by betting on Durant staying, instead of dealing Irving to the Lakers and taking the two future first-rounders. 

Now Tsai has to take advantage of the fact that the salary cap doesn’t apply to executives. The Athletic reported recently that some people around Bob Myers are predicting he will leave Golden State. Tsai needs to give him another reason to take on a new challenge. 

Myers hired Steve Kerr, not Steve Nash. He found Draymond Green in the second round. He signed Durant. He made moves for Andre Iguodala and Andrew Wiggins, and drafted Jordan Poole with the 28th pick. He built a genuine long-term partnership with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Green. 

Myers is a culture builder, not a culture talker. He’s the next superstar the Nets should chase.