Who is Nets.com? It's not Marc Cuban ... or James Dolan

It started a couple of months ago when traffic to nets.com was directed to a website showing Marc Cuban and offering a message to Mikhail Prokhorov.

"Looking for the New Jersey Nets? Looking for the Brooklyn Nets? They're not here...but they SHOULD be!

After all, there's just one team: The Nets!"

Initially, there was speculation that Cuban, the fun-loving owner of the Mavericks, had bought the URL to screw with Prokhorov's head. Like the NBA would have allowed that. Now, nets.com links to a Knicks.com page dedicated to getting out the All-Star vote for Carmelo Anthony et al.

So what's the real story? A league source tells NetsDaily that this is all about money, that the company who owns the rights to the URL wants money, lot of money, for the site .... like seven figures ... and Prokhorov won't pay up. He didn't get to be worth $20 billion by overpaying for assets. (The Nets did acquire the rights to brooklynnets.com.)

The source admits that the Nets initiated the discussions and would like to buy the address, but not at the price that's being asked. Does it bother them? Nope. It's business, not personal.

• Nets.com, where you can vote for Knicks All-Stars - Adi Joseph - USA Today
• The Plot Thickens: Nets.com Redirects to New York Knicks' Website - Devin Kharpertian - The Brooklyn Game
• Nets-related domain name redirects users to Knicks homepage - Anthony Sulla-Heffinger - New York Post
  
• Nets.com links to Knicks site?! - Mike Mazzeo - ESPN New York