A Brief Thank You To Jared Dudley And Sean Marks
by Boobie
The Philadelphia 76ers and the Brooklyn Nets have shared an odd connection over the past half-decade or so. As the Sixers were embarking on The Process, churning through young fringe-NBA players with the duel goals of finding diamonds in the rough and putting themselves in position to take as many potential stars in the draft as possible, the Nets were taking the opposite tact, trading the Boston Celtics two first round picks and first round pick swap rights in exchange for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett with the intent of fast-forwarding to title contention. Unfortunately, when your owner is a playboy Russian oligarch and your GM is Billy King, when you take that big a swing it is probably not going to work out. It was one of the worst trades in NBA history, backfiring immediately when the aging Hall of Famers showed they were truly washed and leaving the Nets with no reward for the painful losing that followed.
This meant that the Nets team-building situation was something of a nightmarish photo-negative of the Sixers: while the Sixers could work the margins in service of star acquisition via the draft, the Nets could only build through those margins. As a fan of the Sixers, who were often maligned by national and traditional local media but who has a fan base that bought into the undefined but bright future and managed to make the lean years enjoyable, I felt for the Nets, and hoped they’d scratch and claw their way back to relevance soon.
And they did! By taking smart risks in the drafts where they had picks (like Caris LeVert, who dropped to them because of injury problems but what easily a lottery talent at Michigan) and trades (All-star guard D’Aneglo Russell was a distressed asset who had worn out his welcome on the dysfunctional Lakers), working the free agency scrap heap (Spencer Dinwiddie and Joe Harris were each signed after being waived by the Bulls and Magic, respectively), and playing a forward-thinking style predicated on a high pace and three pointers (much like the Process Sixers), the Nets became a darling of the NBA cognoscenti. This season, the first after finally handing over the last first round pick from that disastrous trade, they were fun to watch, and made the playoffs way ahead of schedule, their attacking guard-heavy roster presenting a theoretically tough matchup for a Sixers team woefully devoid of point-of-attack defenders.
Playoff series, though, tend to be where any fondness a fan holds for their team’s opposition dies. Last year I appreciated the physical, scrappy, overachieving Heat; by the time the Sixers dispensed with them, I never wanted to watch another second of James Johnson and his stupid MMA expertise. I figured the same would happen for the Nets, and I’d be down one more team I could kind of root for in mid-January NBATV games. A shame, but part of the deal when you have to play four-to-seven high-stakes games against the same team. Luckily, that wasn’t the case this year, and for that I’m grateful to Jared Dudley and Sean Marks.
Dudley and Marks spent the series acting as a hate magnet, with Dudley talking heaps of trash while contributing absolutely nothing for the Nets and Marks whining about perceived flagrant fouls like a spoiled child being sent to bed early by his babysitter. The pair would not have behaved any differently if they’d had a bet about who could walk around with more poop in their pants at the end of the series, with the more severely infected case of diaper rash serving as the tiebreaker. With their team in need of leadership and a steadying presence to guide them through the inevitable fallow periods of a three-point bombing approach, they chose instead to scream at the top of their lungs until they were red in the face, only stopping to take a deep breath that would allow them to begin screaming at the top of their lungs again.
This meant that rather than making fun of Harris, the NBA’s 3P% leader this season, for going Snow Miser-level cold, Sixers fans could simply point out that Jared Dudley looks like a honey bun who just asked to see a supermarket manager because a cashier wouldn’t take his two-months-past-expiration coupon for $.50 off boxes of Depends bed protectors. Instead of getting frustrated with LeVert, a bad three point shooter during the season, for suddenly shooting 46% from deep, they could point out that Sean Marks is a vegemite-boomerang widdle dingo-snack-ass baby and be done with it.
It’s especially gratifying in the case of Dudley. He may not be good anymore, but he’s still a pretty smart, well-respected veteran, the type of guy who should know better than to provide bulletin board material to his opponents’ young stars, and should be embarrassed that his best contribution, starting a Game 4 brawl that ended with Jimmy Butler‘s ejection, ended with the Sixers coming from behind and winning, galvanized by the brouhaha.
Next season, Dudley will probably be on another young team in need of veteran bench minutes. Marks will have made a couple franchise-altering decisions, like whether to re-sign Russell to a big-money contract and who to make the first first-round pick of the post-Celtics trade fallout era. And I’ll still be able to root for the Nets when they play the Pacers in the middle of the season, because hey, it’s not LeVert or Jared Allen’s fault that their GM kangaroo-hopped into the refs’ locker room and an old out-of-shape guy made Ben Simmons start caring after a bafflingly passive Game 1.
So thanks, Jared and Sean. Your sacrifice this postseason was a noble one. I won’t soon forget it.
