Back in the day, I used to love playing the Madden NFL and the NCAA Football franchise video games. They were so good because you could do everything. You could control action on the field and/or you could control action off the field with several different off-season modes.
Now, I always loved playing the actual games and maneuvering through seasons, but I had a friend who I could have sworn liked the recruiting part of the college game better than the actual playing and he liked the setting ticket prices part better than the actual playing of the pro game.
I kind of feel that’s where we’re at with the NBA. For some people, the actual season and on-court play is the fun part, and for some people, the offseason drama and transactions is the fun part.
To discuss that and more, including his rise in media, I caught up with ESPN NBA Front Office Insider and former Nets General Manager Bobby Marks.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Some questions and answers have been shortened or edited for clarity.
BSM: When you got out of the NBA, you had been in it for 20 years. Why did you not want to stay in the NBA? Why did you want to transition into something else?
Bobby Marks: When you have two young boys at home, you basically have to reinvent yourself. Your options are somewhat limited. I was under the impression that I would I’d take a year off because I still had some salary coming in and then I would kind of figure things out next offseason, in the offseason of 2016.
I guess I found the media and the media found me where, after about a month, I got the itch right around the draft and around free agency. I really just started going on social media and going on Twitter and just commenting on how free agency works and how contracts work and how it impacts teams when a trade happens and that’s really how the media part started for me. There was nothing beforehand. And I just built a following from there, in 180 characters or 240 or however many, and in however long I went from 250 followers to 10,000 to 20,000. And it just kind of built from there.
I had known Woj (Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN) for a while because when I worked in New Jersey, he worked for the Bergen Record. And I saw him on the concourse of NBA Summer League in Vegas and he was like, ‘Hey, I really like what you’re doing on Twitter and stuff. And we’re thinking of branching off at Yahoo (when Woj worked there) and starting a basketball division here. And we’ll have people with specialties, newsbreakers, people who do sneakers, and the draft and featured writers. We’re interested in someone doing a front office section.” He asked if I’d have interest and I said yeah…
BSM: Considering you had a goal of getting back into the NBA, were you ever leery of saying too much or giving away secrets and how it might impact you?
BM: I think I was warned about three times from the Nets when I got into the media part of it. They were like, ‘Hey, you’ve got to pull back a little bit here….’ And that’s the balancing act for me. I need to give the perspective of when a team like Minnesota trades four first-round picks and they’re getting crushed in the media, and I’ve been there. I was in Brooklyn, we did it with (Paul) Pierce and (Kevin) Garnett, I know the perspective here… I’ve followed Jon Gruden and Jeff Van Gundy, guys who have coached, and then were in the media, and I always wondered, ‘When would they ever go back?
For me, this was always going to be a stepping stone and then I was going to be back in the league in a year. And I think as the years go by and you get a comfort level with what you’re doing here, it makes it more challenging to go back to the league, unless of course the perfect opportunity is going to be there.
BSM: Did you ever realize how much of a grind the media circuit is?
BM: No, I didn’t…it’s a different grind. Like it’s a different grind because I feel like I’m working for all 30 teams. I have no bias for the Lakers or the Nets or the Milwaukee Bucks, but it’s more staying on top of things, where as in Brooklyn and New Jersey, I was just focused on that team. I’m focused on 15 players.
I’m focused on the employees within our department here. And certainly you’re still calling teams and you’re checking in on teams here, but for this, I feel like I’m working for all 30 teams and for all 30 teams fan bases, as far as giving that perspective.
BSM: How do you simplify some of the front office stuff? Some of the contract stuff is like deciphering hieroglyphics. How do you simplify it for us?
BM: I’m my own researcher. That’s how it is. I’m starting to work on things for next off season right now. So when I go on TV or I go on radio, or I write my own articles, it’s not like somebody’s feeding me the information and I’m just going off that. And for me, I have a knowledge of the CBA and how the rules work just by trial and error. I’ve lived through a lot of different experiences. When the Sixers are getting investigated by the league for salary cap circumvention, or tampering for James Harden, I can give my perspective because I’ve been there with Brooklyn when we did it with (Andrei) Kirilenko…
BSM: Like the video game analogy that I wrote above… do you think we’re at the point where for some people the NBA offseason is more interesting than the regular season?
BM: …Yeah. I think what goes on in the court is extremely important, but there is that element to the transaction business. Whether it be the draft, whether it be trades, whether it be roster building — people crave that. People want to know how Kyrie Irving can make his way to the Lakers. Or, how does DeAndre Ayton get to Indiana with cap space? There’s a thirst for that… When I started with the Nets, we had a system called Lotus Notes. It was a computerized system that was located in an empty office. That was the transaction wire.
So every morning, you would go in there and it would be a spit out of like 10 different papers. ‘John Smith just signed in New Jersey, Joe Smith just signed in New York and Mike Smith was waived by the Knicks.’ That’s how you found out about transactions. It wasn’t Woj. It wasn’t (Brian) Windhorst. It wasn’t Zach Lowe. It was by a piece of paper that you would check in the
morning, in the middle of the afternoon, and at night. And now, 27 years later, it’s incredible.
BSM: I know that you are not, but how many times per day are you asked if you are related to Sean Marks, the current GM of the Nets?
BM: So I’m in Hawaii a few weeks ago and a guy came up to me and says “Sean Marks!” And I looked at him and he says, “I’m sorry, Bobby Marks!” And I said, “Yeah, Bobby Marks.” And he says “When is Kyrie getting traded?” When Sean got hired in Brooklyn, I think it was in 2016, when the AP reported, it originally came down as Bobby Marks, so people were calling me like “are you back in?” And I was like “No, no, I’m not. Trust me. I’m not back in.” He’s tall. He’s from New Zealand. I’m 5’10 from Northern New Jersey.
Brady Farkas is a sports radio professional with 5+ years of experience as a Program Director, On-Air Personality, Assistant Program Director and Producer in Burlington, VT and Albany, NY. He’s well versed in content creation, developing ideas to generate ratings and revenue, working in a team environment, and improving and growing digital content thru the use of social media, audio/video, and station websites. His primary goal is to host a daily sports talk program for a company/station that is dedicated to serving sports fans. You can find him on Twitter @WDEVRadioBrady and reach him by email at bradyfarkas@gmail.com.
