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November 17, 2009
NJ Nets Mailbag (Hodgepodge Edition)
NJ.com
by Dave D'Alessandro (and his readers)
A couple letters in Dave D'Alessandro's mailbag don't pertain to how woeful Bruce Ratner's penny-pinching has rendered the Nets.
Dave: Here in Brooklyn, they must be using invisible bulldozers, because I don’t see any on the Yards site.
JamesJT: I’m thinking Mr. Yormark misspoke, or simply meant that the machinery is very close by and ready to begin work, which is obviously the case. I’m told that the prep work has been going on for years -- new sewage and water pipes, building the temp rail yard, etc. -- all the stuff necessary for pre-groundbreaking.
NoLandGrab: Mr. Yormark is more prone to fibbing than misspeaking.
Double D: Is there any chance that Oligarchy Ollie doesn’t pass the Stern test?
TullyThanks for the laugh I needed today, Tul. There was no Stern test, per se -- it was a complete whitewash, with the primer coat applied way back in August, shortly after a Ratner visit to Moscow. There was never any way they were going to turn him away: If you can let inveterate racist such as Donald Sterling into your club, who can you realistically keep out of it? And maybe he got his nine or 15 or 25 billion (we’re hearing newer and higher figures) through cronyism, Putinism, and other questionable means, but that doesn’t make him anything less than a swell guy in Stern’s eyes. So Mickey will take over the team soon, the commish will thump his chest about how he embodies and embraces noblesse oblige, and the rest of us will hold our noses in honor of the people of Norilsk, who have to inhale sulfur dioxide and other toxic dusts that come from his smokestacks as he piles up his billions.
NLG: If the Prokhorov deal was cooked in August, that would put it several weeks ahead of the "official" timeline of events.
Posted by eric at November 17, 2009 1:47 PM