Last night, the Brooklyn Nets won their biggest home game of the season after they defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder 106-96 in impressive fashion. They played solid defense, work the Thunder in the paint and executed a great gameplan to have Brook Lopez feast against the Thunder frontline.
The big win comes just a short time after the Nets made some moves to alter their front office by removing Billy King as general manager and firing head coach Lionel Hollins. While Tony Brown has the reigns currently as the interim head coach, the Nets have yet to make a move towards naming an official general manager with assistant general manager Frank Zanin controlling personnel moves for now.
It’s inching closer to the trade deadline and Brooklyn is looking to put someone in charge who can make moves with this interesting roster.
Following from Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski.
Two Western Conference executives have moved into prominent consideration with Bryan Colangelo and Danny Ferry for the Brooklyn Nets’ general manager job, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
Denver Nuggets assistant GM Arturas Karnisovas and Houston Rockets executive VP of basketball operations Gersson Rosas have emerged as serious candidates in the process, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
The Nets have expressed a desire to have a GM in place prior to the Feb. 18 trade deadline, league sources told Yahoo Sports. Formal interviews are expected to begin in early February.
As the Nets’ hierarchy canvasses for background and insight, multiple league executives have spoken at length with team officials about Karnisovas and Rosas in recent days and weeks. While other candidates remain possibilities, these two have separated themselves in the process, league sources said.
Karnisovas and Rosas fit the Nets’ desire to have a more global scouting focus, something ownership believes was lacking under the previous regime. The Nets are severely limited in draft picks over the next several years, and will need to be creative in reshaping a floundering roster.
Karnisovas, a native of Lithuania, speaks several languages, including Russian, and has strong relationships with the members of owner Mikhail Prokhorov’s extended sporting inner-circle. Karnisovas was a college star at Seton Hall University, and has polished a strong global basketball résumé that includes jobs in the NBA’s league office, director of scouting with the Rockets’ front office, and currently as assistant GM with the Nuggets. Karnisovas spent two years as USA Basketball’s global basketball scout.
In his 13th year with the Rockets, Rosas, a native of Bogota, Colombia, has been the franchise’s Executive VP for five years and worked closely with GM Daryl Morey in remaking the roster and building a 2014-15 Western Conference finalist. Rosas played a prominent role in the Rockets’ reshaping of the roster in the post-Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady era, when the franchise traded McGrady for multiple draft picks and built up the assets needed to acquire star James Harden via trade and lure Dwight Howard in free agency.
Rosas played a significant part in bringing Patrick Beverley from Europe as a free agent and drafting a future max-contract player, Chandler Parsons, with the 38th pick of the draft. During those years, Karnisovas was the Rockets’ director of scouting.
