Nets’ rush to hire Ime Udoka will just be their latest losing bet

General manager Sean Marks is weighing a decision that will dramatically impact the future of the Brooklyn Nets, a truth that should compel every Nets fan to run a 4.3 forty for the exits. Marks is about to hire yet another coach, and the leading candidate is a man serving a yearlong suspension imposed by the very team that swept the Nets out of last year’s playoffs.

You can’t make it up, and you never have to make it up when it involves the Nets. On a day when they finally got something right with the announcement that the team and Kyrie Irving will each donate $500,000 to causes opposing hate and intolerance, and with Irving’s admission that he erred in posting a link to an anti-Semitic film, the Nets still dribbled themselves into a dangerous corner.

In the wake of Steve Nash’s firing, they are reportedly prepared to hire former Nash assistant and suspended Celtics head coach Ime Udoka. You are aware that Udoka was benched by the Celtics for the entire 2022-23 season for engaging in an improper relationship with a female subordinate and, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, for using “crude language” with that subordinate before the start of the relationship.

The Nets have gambled before with a lot of people, starting with Kevin Durant’s chosen sidekick, Irving, who wasn’t happy playing with one of the two greatest NBA players of all time (LeBron James), or playing for one of the two greatest NBA franchises of all time (the Celtics). They gambled on a coach with no experience, Nash, and on James Harden and Ben Simmons, two stars who, along with Irving, reconfigured the definition of “high maintenance.” The Nets lost all of those gambles.

Chances are they would lose this one, too. They are trying to clean up their own mess by borrowing from someone else’s mess, never a good idea.

“It’s a shotgun marriage,” said former Nets executive and current ESPN analyst Bobby Marks, no relation to Sean. “I don’t understand. Are Boston’s ethics and standards of workplace conduct higher than Brooklyn’s?”

The answer is painfully obvious. Sean Marks and owner Joe Tsai are apparently ready to sign off on the hiring of a coach whose in-house conduct was reckless enough to earn a tougher punishment than Latrell Sprewell ultimately got (68 games) for choking P.J. Carlesimo in 1997.

Do you think the Celtics really wanted to banish a rookie coach who had just led them to The Finals? So yes, that’s what they thought of Udoka’s actions.

It’s hard to believe NBA commissioner Adam Silver would allow anyone under a season-long suspension to take a backdoor cut to a fresh start with any team, never mind a division rival, mere weeks into the penalty. But that’s the way this is apparently going down.

Wednesday night, the Nets sent out a statement disclosing their million-dollar partnership with Irving — and their commitment to work with the Anti-Defamation League — to combat the kind of hate that Irving himself had endorsed. The point guard finally said he is “aware of the negative impact of my post towards the Jewish community” and maintained that he doesn’t believe “everything said in the documentary was true or reflects my morals and principals.”

So be it. But as an organization long guided by a wayward moral compass, the Nets should now be concerned about the message that Udoka’s hiring would send to their right-minded employees and supporters, and especially to women.

It seems the Nets are only concerned about trying to save a superstar-centric concept that is already broken beyond repair.

“The Durant-Irving experiment is over,” Bobby Marks said. “I would just wipe the slate clean and start over.”

But the Nets are too desperate to do anything that sensible. With virtually no chance of giving Irving another big contract during next summer’s free agency, the Nets want to heave up one final Hail Mary pass. Sean Marks knows he will get fired before Tsai lets him start a rebuild, so what the hell, why not take a crazy shot at Udoka and hope to get really lucky?

And from a purely basketball standpoint, Udoka is a major upgrade on Nash. A Hall-of-Fame point guard, Nash could never earn Irving’s respect. One league source witnessed Nash stomping his feet and shooting an angry look at Irving during last week’s loss to Dallas for breaking a called play. The fire is best described as much too little, much too late.

Udoka showed no fear in coaching the Celtics, publicly questioning their mental toughness before they responded to him in a big way. His Nets would play defense and get physical like Nash’s Nets never did.

At the same time, Udoka’s ability to lead has been severely compromised. What happens when the new coach tries to rebuke a player, and that player decides he shouldn’t have to listen to someone who got himself suspended for a full year?

In the end, if he hires Udoka, Sean Marks will likely say that he knows the full character of the man from their time together in San Antonio and Brooklyn, and that Udoka’s mistakes in Boston were thoroughly vetted.

But it’s never been wise to take the Nets at their word. They take a lot of gambles, and they have a great talent for losing them.