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December 24, 2009
Nets Keep Losing, Moving Closer to Brooklyn
NBC New York
by Josh Alper
If you ignore the fact that the Nets are a professional basketball team, things are going quite well for them.
Bruce Ratner, the team's owner, just signed documents to close on Atlantic Yards, the proceeds from the sale of tax-exempt bonds are in an escrow account waiting to be spent on construction and the state filed to raze the remaining holdout tenants under eminent domain.
The opponents of the deal will continue to fight, right down to chaining themselves to the bar at Freddy's, but things appear to be too far down the road now for their fight to result in victory. They can take some pride in inflicting much damage to Ratner's bank account, the financial value of the Nets and, as a direct result of those money hits, the quality of the basketball team.
It's not what they were looking to accomplish, of course, but they've essentially salted the earth under the Nets over the last few years. The team's standing as a real-estate play on a disputed piece of land turned them from a perennial playoff team to the biggest laughingstock in sports. They added another notch to their bedpost on Wednesday night by losing to the Timberwolves for the second time this season. The Wolves have just six wins overall, which should tell you just about everything you need to know about the way the Nets have held up through the legal battles.
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Bergen Record, Nets fall at home to another last-place team
With their latest loss, 103-99, Wednesday night at the Izod Center to the almost-as-awful Minnesota Timberwolves, the Nets moved ever closer to an avalanche of pingpong balls in next year’s lottery.
...Though their last lead came in the first quarter, the Nets were in this one to the end. But that figured to be the case, considering this was one of the NBA’s worst matchups for this point in a season.
With the teams having a combined .123 winning percentage entering play, this game was on par with the Mavericks (5-27) versus Nuggets (2-28) in 1998, and last year’s meeting of the Thunder (3-27) and Wizards (4-23), according to Stats Inc.
...At least in the organization’s view, it was already a good day before the team tipped off – with the announcement that three major agencies had closed on the proposed Atlantic Yards project.
“I think it’s important because it creates a great buzz around the team,” Vandeweghe said of the Nets’ potential move to Brooklyn.
NoLandGrab: If that's the result of a "great buzz," yeesh.
Posted by eric at December 24, 2009 9:55 AM