Nets To Interview Rosas, Karnisovas For GM Post

7:55pm: Brooklyn has also received permission from Denver to interview Karnisovas, NetsDaily reports. Karnisovas, 44, was a member of the NBA’s basketball operations office from 2003 to 2008. He then spent five seasons as an international scout for the Rockets, an experience that holds high value to the Nets, who want to ramp up their international scouting ties, according to Wojnarowski. The executive was named assistant GM of the Nuggets in July of 2013.

6:39pm: The Nets have requested and received permission from the Rockets to interview their executive VP of basketball operations Gersson Rosas for the team’s vacant GM post, Calvin Watkins of ESPN.com reports (Twitter link). Brooklyn’s interest in Rosas was first reported by Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports. The Nets are also reportedly considering Denver assistant GM Arturas Karnisovas for the position.

Brooklyn reportedly wants to hire a GM before the February 18th trade deadline, which is two weeks from Thursday, and the Nets plan to begin formal interviews shortly, according to Wojnarowski. Nets officials want a greater emphasis on international scouting, feeling as though the team lacked that under former GM Billy King, the Yahoo scribe relayed. Rosas, a native of Bogota, Colombia, has been with the Rockets’ organization for 13 years, and has been the franchise’s Executive VP for the past five years. He was previously hired as Mavericks GM in 2013, but Dallas envisioned him as a clear subordinate to president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson, something that apparently didn’t sit well with Rosas, who resigned just three months into the job.

Rosas played a prominent role in the Rockets’ reshaping of their roster in the post-Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady seasons, when the franchise traded McGrady for multiple draft picks and built up the required assets to acquire James Harden via trade and sign Dwight Howard in free agency, according to Wojnarowski (h/t NetsDaily). He also played a major part in bringing Patrick Beverley from Europe as a free agent and drafting small forward Chandler Parsons, as Wojnarowski noted in his profile of the executive.