Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
The Brooklyn Nets and the battle for Big Apple affections
The Brooklyn Nets …. LeBron James …. Battle for Big Apple affections …. Hot topics for sure among New York-area hoops fans with news that Russia’s richest man is riding to the $200 million rescue of the Nets, and Brooklyn may once again rise to alter the sports landscape of The City.
The long-ago announced plan to relocate the Nets — struggling to establish an identity and profitability in the swamplands of northern New Jersey — to Brooklyn has been an on-again, off-again mess with team owner, real estate mogul Bruce Ratner, fighting zoning boards, politicians, preservationists, environmentalists and the general economic morass for a mega development deal that included a new arena for the NBA club.
This put the Nets into a no-man’s land and a deconstruction of a once-successful team with Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson stripped away from a team that earlier in the 21st Century went to back-to-back NBA Finals.
Now with banking billionaire and former hoops player Mikhail Prokhorov an NBA owners’ vote away from joining the league as in-charge of the Nets, all things once again seem possible.
