The Brooklyn Nets have begun a massive overhaul as they reassigned Billy King from his GM role after five and a half years in that position. The Nets also fired head coach Lionel Hollins from his head coaching position so there is a lot to be done in Brooklyn as they attempt to start over. Although it is early, Bryan Colangelo has emerged as a strong candidate to replace King as the Nets next general manager, according to Marc Stein and Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.
Colangelo is a two-time former NBA Executive of the Year for his work with the Phoenix Suns and the Toronto Raptors and although he would be a great candidate for the Nets this is all just preliminary. As of right now former assistant GM Frank Zanin is in charge of basketball operations and could be fairly busy pretty soon with the trade deadline coming up but he is not expected to be the general manager long-term.
Owner Mikhail Prokhorov did promise that he would take a methodical approach to picking the next GM for the Nets and he hopes to interview several candidates before making a decision. Despite the methodical approach members of Prokhorov's inner circle have reportedly been quietly reaching out to potential GM candidates like Colangelo to gauge interest and see if they can gain any insight on how to get out of the huge hole they have dug themselves.
While Prokhorov is expected to be involved in the GM search, his right hand man, Dmitry Razumov, is expected to lead the search. Razumov is a behind the scenes guy for the Nets but is fully entrusted by Prokhorov to make decisions involving the franchise. Razumov was reportedly one of the people who made a big push to hire Jason Kidd back in 2013 even though he was an inexperienced option at the time.
Colangelo is an attractive option to the Nets because he has turned around franchises before and has been very successful in various ways in about 20 years in the league. Let's face it though; the Nets GM job is not exactly an attractive position at the moment so it might take the Nets a little longer than anticipated to hire somebody.
Hiring a GM is likely a pre-requisite to hiring a new coach but there have already been some names emerge as coaching candidates as well. The one everybody is talking about is John Calipari but that seems highly unlikely as his demands are insane and he has one of the best jobs in college basketball. More realistic options for a new head coach are Tom Thibodeau and Mark Jackson but as mentioned before a GM likely needs to come first before the head coaching search can really begin.
