For all the heat general manager Sean Marks and company receives, he and Brooklyn have a supporter on their side. Who is it?
Sean Marks gets blasted for how he's constructed this Brooklyn Nets team. After all, he's loaded up heavy on rookies like Egor Demin and Nolan Traore, but the first-year guys out-number veterans Michael Porter Jr. and Nic Claxton.
This roster makeup has led to a 15-38 mark at the NBA All-Star Game break. Plus has positioned the Nets to potentially land the No. 1 pick in the June NBA Draft Lottery.
Marks, however, has an ardent backer on his side.
CBS Sports NBA analyst Sam Quinn unveiled his rankings of best league front offices from one to 30. Marks and Brooklyn are nowhere near the bottom.
Quinn instead placed the Nets high -- No. 15 overall to be exact. The NBA columnist even believes Marks receives "unfair" critique.
"The Nets are the team I most consistently find myself defending in arguments about these rankings. A lot of the criticism Brooklyn's front office gets is unfair," Quinn wrote.
He later added why he chooses to defend the embattled GM.
"Sean Marks took over a team without control over its first-round picks, built it into a championship favorite, and then watched it fall apart because of a pandemic," Quinn said.
The 50-year-old Marks became GM a decade ago. Brooklyn became a playoff contender three seasons later with a 42-40 mark. Marks eventually built a 48-24 team under then head coach Steve Nash during that said Pandemic season.
"I'm not punishing a general manager for COVID, and if I were to punish general managers over abrupt James Harden trade requests, we'd be dinging a huge chunk of this list. Besides, they've rebounded quite nicely," Quinn said.
The "rebound" comes from Marks helping land five rookies in the past draft class. Demin and Traore are the headliners, but Drake Powell plus Danny Wolf have flashed their potential too.
"Criticism over last year's guard-heavy draft class -- some of which came from me! -- appears mostly overblown at this point," Quinn wrote. "There were a lot of difference-makers in last year's draft, but most of them were gone by the time Brooklyn made its second-pick. Its first one, Egor Dëmin, has exceeded expectations as a big playmaker who's making his shots after missing all of his jumpers last year at BYU. The other four first-round picks are like most rookies: showing promise in small roles, but still far away from their theoretical peaks."
Regardless, Quinn surfaces as a supporter of Marks' vision despite what the win-loss results look like.
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