In her first interview since she and Joe Tsai announced their divorce in July, Clara Wu Tsai spoke with the New York Times culture critic Ginia Bellafonte about how she sees new horizons for her not just in basketball, but in the arts including new works at Barclays Center, social justice initatives and the varied charities she and Joe have funded.
At 60, Wu Tsai, one of the most celebrated stewards in the W.N.B.A., finds herself at a moment of creative transition, aspiring to leave a broad cultural
imprint on Brooklyn that would extend beyond her basketball empire.
Call it a coming out for a woman who is emerging from her most prominent role in what has been a man’s world. ownership of professional sports teams, and using it to feed other ambitions. She’s been co-owner of the Nets and Liberty, and is now using that success to feed other ambitions While Joe Tsai remains Chairman of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, Wu Tsai serve as vice-chair with Joe the Nets governor and Wu Tsai the Liberty governor, a rough division of labor they have said will continue post-divorce. (Ollie Weisberg, who runs the family investment vehicle, Blue Pool Capital, is a minority owner as well.)
However, she wants people to know that her interests and ambitions are broader, much broader, as Bellafonte writes.
In the intervening months, Wu Tsai has prepared for the openings of various public arts initiatives she has sponsored in and around Barclays; settled into a carriage house in Brooklyn Heights, where she is spending more and more time; and turned up at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard,” a film she produced.
Her move to the $10 million Brooklyn carriage house where Bellafante conducted most of her interviews also signals that Wu Tsai will be taking an bigger role in the borough. She is already a big cultural player on the other side of the East River.
Tsai sits on the boards of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, with its $22 billion in assets, and Lincoln Center. Four years ago, the Tsais donated $50 million toward the renovation of Geffen Hall.
Several of her new Brooklyn arts initiatives will become quite obvious to fans. Making their debut later this month at Barclays Center, the third leg of BSE, will be a number of big art projects, part of the Tsais’ five-year, $150 million renovation of the 14-year-old arena.
Wu Tsai has commissioned (New York artist Rashid) Johnson and her friend, the conceptual artist Sarah Sze, to produce pieces for Barclays. Both Sze’s installation, “Wave,” and a painting of Johnson’s will be introduced this month. “Thousands of people go to the Barclays Center almost every night to experience something special, whether it’s a concert or a Liberty game or a Nets game, and they all go there to be uplifted,” Wu Tsai said. “They go there to cheer, to sing loudly at the top of their lungs with their favorite band, And so I just thought art should be part of that experience.”
The additions will be most prominent at the main entrance where the Sze’s “Wave”, an airborne sculpture will be suspended from the atrium ceiling. At the new American Express entrance and lounge on Flatbush Avenue, there will be two large scale paintings by Johnson and Mark Bradford. Expect all to be unveiled by Nets opening night on October 21. Among the other pieces she has shepherded at Barclays include “You Belong Here/We Belong Here” video sculpture above the Barclays Center subway entrance and “The Liberty Portraits: A Monument to the 2024 Champions,” the plaza photo installation honoring the 2024 WNBA champion New York Liberty.
“Brooklyn has one of the greatest concentrations of creative talent anywhere in the world, and Barclays Center is one of its busiest transit points. This program places art in dialogue with the architecture and daily rhythm of the plaza, redefining what a sports arena can be for fans, players, and the public,” she said back in Aprilwhen the arts program was announced.
Wu Tsai has also been active in the Brooklyn Social Justice Fund since the 2020 protests over the killing of George Floyd. While each of the NBA’s 30 clubs were required to set aside $10 million for social justice initiatives, the Tsais committed to $50 million over 1o years. It was her idea and she directs it. Bellafonte reports its latest initiative is focused on new mothers.
Some of the money in her current fund is planned toward a guaranteed basic income initiative for new mothers in Brownsville, where the poverty rate has stood intractably higher than the New York City average for decades. Some goes to a program that brings incarcerated parents and their children together once a month at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Other money has been directed at expanding arts and music education in public schools — curricula based on the work of Max Roach and Jean-Michel Basquiat, both Brooklynites.
Wu Tsai is also one of the founding partners and biggest financial supporters of the REFORM Alliance, devoted to reforming parole and probation policies around the country. It has already had success in New York. Wu Tsai was inspired by Meek Mill’s issues with the system in Philadelphia.
In this and other recent interviews, she has said that Brooklyn with its varied cultural, sports and historical prominence played a role in the couple’s decision to buy the Nets. She revealed that before they bought in back in 2017, they had considered the Houston Rockets.
They had been looking for a sports team both because they thought it would make a good asset, Wu Tsai said, and because it would bring the family, so besotted with sports, closer together.
“The kids were really interested in Houston because James Harden at that time was playing for Houston,” she said. “I was immediately focused on Brooklyn and on New York, which is where I worked out of business school.”
Ironically, as it turned out, their three kids, all serious athletes, got their wish. The Nets traded for Harden in January 2021, a year and a half after Mom and Dad took over the Nets. Wishing, as it turned, didn’t make it so.
Some in Brooklyn griped to Bellafonte about how Wu Tsai has not taken a much of a lead role locally, at least yet, particularly considering her generosity with those big Manhattan’s big institutions (although in recent months, she has partnered with Spike Lee, who is a big Liberty fan as well as a Knicks one, as well as the Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Playback, a film project which will sponsor watch parties starting next month).
“I think Brooklyn institutions in general punch above their weight,” she told me. “They do amazing things. The Brooklyn Museum, their exhibitions are world class.” She does what she can, she told me, but some problems, she said, are larger than any one person’s capacity to solve.“
She has also worked with the city school system to create curricula based on the work of Max Roach and Jean-Michel Basquiat, both Brooklynites, as Bellafonte reports.
Brooklyn represents only one aspect of Wu Tsai’s new role in the arts. She is the producer of a new movie, Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard,” which features Kate and Mara Rooney (who have their own sports connections, being part of two NFL’s Rooney and Mara families who founded the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants.) She sees herself as a benefactor of films — and arts — that need resources which she has in ample supply.
Wu Tsai read the script and was transfixed. “I thought, OK, a movie like this might not get made through conventional channels,” she told me. “And I just believed the film ought to exist.”
The film won plaudits at the Vienna Film Festival last month. Wu Tsai has produced seven films in recent years, including a documentary, “Unfinished Business,” about the WNBA’s 25th anniversary, as well as a Broadway play, “Hell’s Kitchen.“
In discussing her interests whether in Brooklyn or beyond, Wu Tsai told Bellafonte that one thing she will not be expanding is a political role, although she did give Governor Kathy Hochul nearly $70,000 for his first gubernatorial run four years ago. (Joe Tsai cannot donate to U.S. election campaigns as a Canadian citizen.)
The interviews Bellafonte conducted for her story took place before the Liberty were swept by the Atlanta Dream over the weekend so there was no discussion of what the next steps will be for the 2024 WNBA champions. Bellafonte did note that Wu Tsai is and has been personally involved in things like recruiting Breanna Stewart.
When Wu Tsai thinks that something should happen, she generally has the means to ensure that it does. Three years ago, for example, she flew to Istanbul to woo Breanna Stewart, then a coveted free agent in the Euroleague, to the Liberty. Wu Tsai rented an 80-foot touring boat and took Stewart, her wife and the couple’s daughter on a cruise.
She obviously will play a role in whatever personnel moves are made in light of a disappointing (in the extreme) season. Indeed, she told another interviewer, David M. Rubenstein, that she and Joe “are both involved in head coach hires” for both franchises. She also told Rubenstein she plays a role in business decisions involving the Nets as well as the Liberty. She does hold both a Bachelor of Arts degree and a master’s degree in international relations from Stanford and an M.B.A. from Harvard.
“We sometimes are involved in trades and the drafts. but we rely on our GMs to make recommendations and to execute,” she told Rubenstein in an interview for his new book, Inside the Owner’s Box: Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports. “Scouting an analytics are a big part of the front office responsibilities and so on the NBA side, we’ll get more involved in a decision that has major financial implications, like if it pushes us into the second apron.“ (The Nets are a long way from those decisions, with the Nets cap $61 million short of the second apron.)
Will that change subsequent to the divorce, but as Bellafonte notes, “the management and ownership structure would remain in place.”
And why not? The arrangement has in a short period of time led to success on the court for the Liberty and in team valuations for both franchises. The Tsais paid $2.2 billion for the Nets and another $950 million for Barclays Center for a total of $3.15 billion, the two deals concluding in 2019. Just two days ago, Sportico put the value of the combined assets at $7.45 billion, a 136% jump in only seven years. The Liberty increase is even more stunning. They bought the Libs earlier that same year for around $14 million. In May, Sportico put the Libs value at $600 million. That’s better than a 400% jump.
The Times writer didn’t discuss whether Wu Tsai sees her new expanded ambitions fitting together, but so far, so good. She has proven herself a huge success in what is always been a man’s world As she told Rubenstein, all her roles have a certain synergy.
“My ability to reach to reach people in New York City has expanded. Therefore when I speak on behalf of the Liberty and the Nets, more people in more places hear me.”
