Malcolm Gladwell on the Nets, Bruce Ratner and the Lockout

Gotta love that NetsDaily shout out.

This has to be a long term investment 10-20 years. The real revenue comes in the playoffs and winning championships. Proky will turn a profit because he bought in at the right time. Other new owners will not have the luxury of having a new area in the largest city in the world. Ratner really didn’t save money by dropping VC and RJ now that both opted out of their contracts before this summer. DH,VC,RJ,Brook would have been a good team for the last 3 yrs

let’s hope something happens, I hate this situation.

The idiots here are the players and the owners. We have already lost half the pre-season, with the rest likely to go by the end of this week. What are these IDIOTS thinking? I am disgusted with the lack of progress in negotiating a settlement. Shame on both sides, they are screwing us fans.

There is a deal out there to be made, folks-
Via ESPN:

In negotiations, the players’ union had offered to reduce its percentage to as much as 54 percent, with the stipulation that a mechanism would be instituted to reward the players if future revenue increased, the source said.

The owners agreed to try to come up with a mechanism to solve their issues without adding a hard salary cap before the next meeting, according to the source. [emphasis mine] The owners, who have claimed they lost $300 million last season, have been seeking a hard cap — a condition the players have been unwilling to accept.

A good amount of people believe Nets (even some laker fans!). I feel like we are the frontrunner just like the Knicks were in the Mela situation. Three years ago we wouldn’t get a single vote in this thing.
http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1132573

I didnt see the whole thing so I cant offer much insight but the nets were featured on CNBC on live Daytime TV

full video

I haven’t read this one yet, but I assume it’s much of the same tomfoolery.

I won’t hold him to that until I read this recent piece though.

Just watched the Darren Rovell video.

He is obviously pretty ignorant of the fact that teams with New Jersey branding do not get many (key word being many, since I am from NY) fans from New York and Connecticut, whereas teams with New York branding can easily pick up those fans.

Brooklyn is going to do wonders for this team. Changing the Nets name is useless. It already has history behind it (Dr. J, Jason Kidd, etc.), it is easy to remember, and it goes with the other NY teams (Mets and Jets).

The brand is going to be built on location and success on the court. If the Nets get Dwight Howard, no one’s going to care WHAT the name is.

he looked like he was in a hurry. Actually got up when the interview wasnt really over.

have been all day.

a little over two weeks to save the season starting on time…I really hope they are closer than what it appears to be.

I don’t know if it’s a race thing, or if he doesn’t want those that got pushed out of the AY footprint to associate him with eminent domain. But it’s pretty obvious he does not want to smile in those pics.

can’t wait for those

When David Stern says that the “previous ownership” of the Nets lost “several million dollars” on the sale of the team, he is apparently not counting the profits on the arena, the eminent domain victory, the long-term value of that extra 14 acres, or the appreciation of Ratner’s adjoining properties. That is not a lie, exactly. It is an artful misrepresentation. It is like looking at a perfectly respectable kasha knish and pretending it is a ham sandwich.

I recommend including the link to Gladwell’s first Grantland.com article… Equally as inciteful and intriguing

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6874079/psychic-benefits-nba-lockout

First off, Kelo was argued and decided over a year after Ratner bought the team. No need to have even mentioned it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Secondly, Ratner had been building in Downtown Brooklyn since the mid 1980s (mostly office space) and has been building in the Atlantic Yards vicinity (the first of two malls) since the mid 1990s. He had the land secured long before that and could have just as easily built the arena back then if he was so swayed by the Sandra Day O’Connor’s writings on stadiums. Not only did he not build not build an arena in Downtown or where his malls now stand, but he even spent most of the 1990s trying to build a smaller arena (called “Sportsplex”) on Coney Island.

Those plans were killed in 1998 when Giuliani replaced Sportsplex with plans for a minor league ballpark instead:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/23/nyregion/back-to-the-drawing-board-in-coney-island.html?src=pm

Because of those facts, it is my opinion, that like the Nets themselves, Ratner sorta fell upon the whole Atlantic Yards arena and complex. It’s not like he was salivating at the site “ten years ago” with plans of using the Nets as a way to build condos over the area. Although that’s how it all went down, it all moved much-much-much quicker (between late 2002 and early 2004) than that. In fact, I’d bet Ratner didn’t even know who the Nets were 10 years ago.

To me, it all starts with Marty Markowitz. He first publicly pushed for a Brooklyn arena on January 1st, 2003 during his “State of the Borough” speech. While talking about revitalizing the entire Coney area, he mentions bringing an NBA team to Brooklyn. As late as then, the Atlantic Yards area (not nearly as gentrified as it is today) still didn’t gain a single mention.

http://www.brooklyn-usa.org/pages/state_of_the_borough/stateoftheborough03.htm

That speech came several months after Marty had privately recruited Ratner to ask around about buying an NBA franchise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/sports/pro-basketball-ratner-s-path-to-buy-nets-had-pitfalls-and-promise.html?scp=23&sq=Ray%20Chambers,%20Lewis%20Katz&st=cse

Once Ratner got in touch with Lewis Katz, everything changed. Katz made Ratner aware that the Yankees-Nets-Devils family was quickly crumbling. Suddenly, an arena for the Nets in Brooklyn became more than a Markowitz pipe dream. In my opinion THAT is when all parties involved began setting their eyes on Atlantic Yards.

The NY Times link above says that other Brooklyn locations (including Coney Island) were studied, but it has to be much more than a coincidence that the location chosen just happened to be across the street from Ratner’s money losing mall.

It was only then, in the spring of 2003, with one mall being bailed out by the DMV, and with an equally disparaged second mall being built that Ratner looked to make his land grab. It was only then, spring 2003, when all talk of Coney arena was replaced with talk of an Atlantic Yards arena.

Looking back, it’s amazing how quickly it all went down. From Marty’s speech, to the Katz/Ratner meetings, to a David Stern quote “clearly there is no shortage of boroughs in New York” (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/24/sports/pro-basketball-nets-bosses-mutter-amid-the-cheering.html?pagewanted=3&src=pm) where he kinda/sorta voices approval for a Brooklyn move in April 2003, to the Yankee-Nets breakup that summer, to Ratner officially buying the club in January 2004.

I fully understand Gladwell’s theme. I fully support his position that ALL of these owners are fudging numbers while crying poverty. I fully believe that in reality, these owners are only trying to save themselves from their own stupidity and are using the players (even players I detest like Outlol) as their scapegoat. That said, I can’t go along w/Ratner having his eyes on an Atlantic Yards land grab all along.

He wanted to add to his crappy pair of malls. Deep political support, the Yankee-Nets implosion, the failure to ever build Sportsplex put him in a situation where he could make a land grab over one of New York’s busiest transit centers. The arena was and is a way to build luxury condos down the road. But it took a bunch of happy accidents to put Ratner in position to make his land grab happen. This wasn’t some longstanding scheme and Ratner didn’t need Sandra Day O’Connor’s words to greenlight it all.

Who knows, if Katz/Chambers were a little more patient, maybe the Nets are permanently in Newark. Maybe the gentrified Prospect Heights area is building community gardens by the rail yards. Maybe Marty is still talking about an arena on Coney Island.

In Europe why do all the toilets look like they are for 12 years and under? #Tiny

now that i have had a chance to read it through.

—Gladwell makes it seem that the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush was a sudden inspiration for Ratner. The area has been an urban renewal site since the 1950’s. Many people and institutions have tried and failed to develop the corner.

—And in a bit of real sleight of journalist hand, Gladwell makes it seem that Ratner decided to go for the Nets following the Kelo decision which permitted a greater use of eminent domain. The reverse is true. Ratner first expressed interest in the team in 2003, bought it in 2004. The Kelo decision was in 2005.

Overall, though, it’s a home run, particularly the end where he talks about how the US has become this economically inefficient and greedy place….two things that are not unrelated.

would just go away…