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Sean Marks may have been the GM of the Brooklyn Nets for a decade, but his roots lie elsewhere.
The native of Auckland, New Zealand, is part of the first generation of international NBA players, as he said among the first 40 or 50. He became the first player from his home country to play in the NBA, staying for 11 seasons, nine teams. For a year, he played in the Polish league and won a championship before joining the international basketball corps that became the San Antonio Spurs with Tim Duncan (U.S. Virgin Islands), Manu Ginobili (Argentina), Tony Parker (France), Rasho Nesterović (Slovenia), etc., etc., winning two championships, one as a player, one as an assistant.
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Now he works in Brooklyn for a Chinese owner, his second international boss, something no other GM has done. He’s hired the first Spanish (and Catalan) head coach in the league, and he’s drafted four players with foreign passports last June, another first. He regularly goes on international scouting trips.
So his international basketball cred is active and this week he went on Fullcourt Passport, a podcast focused on the NBA’s wider world, taking questions from Boki Nachbar, the former Net and Euroleague player, and veteran NBA writer Ric Bucher. His big take: the globalization of NBA has dramatically changed the sport from scouting to ownership.
“You and I were playing, there were 40, 50 maybe foreign players. And now you look around and I think a quarter of the league is foreign,” he told Nachbar.“ (It’s actually more, about a third.) Of course, it’s not just about percentages. The league, Marks said, is changing in a lot of ways, particularly in places like teams’ scouting departments. coaching offices and development systems.
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“The NBA has completely embraced that,” Marks said, noting that the league cannot ignore any possibility, not when four international players have won the last seven MVP Awards. “The game has become so global and worldly. It is a copycat league, right? We are all trying to copy off who is doing something different and who has got the next greatest thing.”
Among the…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/sean-marks-sees-global-imprint-032209674.html
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Publish date : 2026-04-22 03:22:00
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