Tyler Johnson remembers the meeting he had with the Nets in a hotel back in July 2016. The Nets, at that point, had little going for them. No draft picks, a rookie GM and coach. They were coming off a 21-win season. What they did have was a vision supplied by Sean Marks and a bankroll supplied by Mikhail Prokhorov.
So Marks decided he would make a splash, offering big deals to Johnson, then a 24-year-old combo guard who was becoming a top sixth man in Miami, and Allen Crabbe, also then 24 and a rising star sharpshooter in Portland.