Milton Lee is the Nets director of basketball operations, a title that obscures what he really is: the Nets staffer at the nexis of where basketball and technology meet: whether that's statistics or the design of a high-tech "basketball operations campus", i.e. locker room, at Barclays Center or the programming of iPad's.

He also was the guy Mikhail Prokhorov relied on to look at the team's on-court prospects before the billionaire rushed into buying the Nets.  He liked what he saw in the Nets "fundamentals" and even after this season still does.

"Creative destruction creates an opportunity for the next generation that comes through," said the former Wall Street analyst.

"It's kind of like a wildfire going through the forest that burns everything down, but all of a sudden it's fertile ground to build on."

• The Nets: Not as Lousy as They Seem - Alex Raskin - Wall Street Journal.