NBA: Top 5 candidates for 2019-20 Executive of the Year

When Sean Marks came to the Brooklyn Nets in February 2016 to become the embattled franchise’s new general manager, it was viewed by some as the most thankless task in professional sports.

Other than having no cap space, a roster full of has-beens and never-will-bes and no control over his first-round picks until 2019, Marks had everything he needed to rebuild the Nets.

He settled on Atlanta assistant coach Kenny Atkinson as his head coach and started building something the Nets had seldom had — a plan, a system and a culture built on player development.

When Brooklyn did gain some cap space, Marks deployed it as a way to obtain more assets, essentially renting out that space to teams looking to dump bad contracts and extracting draft picks or young players as the sweetener for those deals.

Taking the last three years of Timofey Mozgov‘s bloated deal in 2017 netted Brooklyn former No. 2 overall pick D’Angelo Russell.

Allowing the Wizards to dump Andrew Nicholson‘s ridiculous deal gained Brooklyn the pick they used to select Jarrett Allen, considered one of their foundation pieces now.

He traded veteran Thaddeus Young to the Indiana Pacers to take a shot at former Michigan guard Caris LeVert, confident his foot issues were in the past (they were, but there have been some other setbacks).

Brooklyn got two decent years from DeMarre Carroll along with the picks used to take Dzanan Musa and last year’s second-round surprise, Rodions Kurucs.

And somewhere along the way, they took in guys like Joe Harris and Spencer Dinwiddie off the street and turned them into the 3-point champion of the NBA and one of the best sixth men in basketball, respectively.

The Nets arrived ahead of schedule, earning a playoff spot last season at the same time their cap sheet was going to allow them to attempt to make some big moves.

Marks took his shot … and buried it. First Kyrie Irving, the two-time All-NBA point guard, climbed aboard the Brooklyn express. Then Kevin Durant, a two-time Finals MVP and a former NBA MVP, signed on.

Since then, Brooklyn has added DeAndre Jordan, picked up Taurean Prince while dumping the last year of Allen Crabbe‘s bloated deal in Atlanta and added depth pieces in Garrett Temple and Wilson Chandler.

The vaunted culture has taken some hits this offseason, however.

Chandler will miss the first 25 games of the season after testing positive for a banned substance and Kurucs made the papers for all the wrong reasons when he was accused of attacking a former girlfriend.

This might be a year early for the Nets to arrive as legitimate contenders, given that Durant will miss most — if not all — of this season recovering from the torn Achilles he sustained in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

But if Brooklyn can take a step into the upper echelon in the Eastern Conference, it would be difficult to ignore Marks’ role in that transformation.