So the Knicks are one win away from their first NBA Finals in 27 years. They’ve also matched the Nets mark of 10 straight post-season wins, set in 2003. Good for them.
Moving on.
We are in a bit of a news lull right now, between the Lottery and the Draft, to be followed by the Nets two summer leagues and free agency, During the news lull, a lot of the hard work on the Draft gets done. There’s the workouts and interviews; results from the NBA Combine; medical data; interviews with everyone the prospects
have ever come in contact with: high school, AAU and college coaches, community leaders etc; as well as video clips, media, social media offerings, and if applicable, police reports. All of it gets pumped into the scouting database to be mulled by the front office as they make their decisions.
Again, part of the lull is due to the Nets historic unwillingness to share much about the process, particularly who’s been in for workouts. Hoopshype keeps a list of who’s been in around the league and as of this week, the list has only one Nets entry: Keba Keita a 6’8” 22-year-old big who played with both Egor Demin and A.J. Dybantsa at BYU.
As a senior last season, Keita averaged 6.2 points and led the team in rebounds (7.2) and blocks (1.8), a complementary piece for Brigham Young.’s stars. He’s on nobody’s Big Board of top 100 prospects but workouts aren’t just about the Draft. The Nets are looking at players for their two Summer League rosters, training camp and finally, the Long Island Nets. There could be other motivations as well. Did Demin recommend him? The native of Mali in west Africa does have a great story.
If you’re looking for hints as to who might have been in, the Hoopshype list includes 19 prospects who’ve been seen by the Knicks at their Greenburgh, N.Y. facility. Agents will schedule visits to give their clients as little travel time and as much rest as they can … and the Nets and Knicks facilities are about an hour apart.
So who’s been in for the Knicks, who hold the 24th, 31st and 55th picks? The big names New York has looked at, per Hoopshype, include Morez Johnson, the 6’9” 20-year-old power forward from Michigan who looked good at the Combine, as well as Zuby Ejiofor, the 6’9” 22-year-old PF from St. John’s and Malachi Moreno, the 7’0” 19-year-old big from Kentucky. Of course, we don’t know. With the Nets holding that sixth pick, top prospects are likely to accept an invitation for Brooklyn.
May is also around the time that the Nets scouting staff gathers at HSS to debate prospects, as the Nets excellent docu-series, SCOUT, showed us last year.
So, we wait. Not long. But we wait.
Waiting on Aspiration
At some point, presumably soon, the NBA will release its report on the Clippers reported manipulation of the NBA’s salary cap by using a company named Aspiration to illegally funnel as much as $28 million to Kawhi Leonard. In the last month, Pablo Torre, the freelance podcaster, has won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award for his groundbreaking reporting on the scandal.
The league hired outside counsel Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a powerhouse New York law firm with its fair share of former federal prosecutors, to investigate. Its progress remains a closely guarded secret. Once the report is in the hands of Adam Silver, it will be up to him to assess penalties which if he follows history could include heavy fines and other sanctions for the team and the league’s richest owner, Steve Ballmer, but also a loss of future picks.
In a similar circumstances back in 2000 involving the Minnesota Timberwolves and Joe Smith, David Stern fined the Minnesota Timberwolves $3.5 million in cash, voided Smith’s deal with the Timberwolves and stripped the T’Wolves of first first round picks. One was later restored. Owner Glen Taylor was suspended for a year and GM was forced to take a leave of absence.
Virtually any fine for Ballmer, worth $132.9 billion as of Friday’s Forbes estimate, would amount to pocket lint and there’s informed speculation that the league will not tinker with Leonard’s contract. That leaves the draft picks.
Let’s say Silver follows his predecessor’s precedent and vacates some Clippers first round picks. It’s complicated. The Clippers don’t have clear title to their own first rounder till 2029. Their 2026 first is owed to the Thunder but they hold the Pacers pick at No. 5. Their 2027 pick may have to be swapped with the Thunder and their 2028 selection is owed to the 76ers. It seems that a penalty docking them picks starting in 2029 and running through, say, 2033, would likely be greeted by a sigh of relief inside the Intuit Dome. Three years is plenty of time to adjust to new realities.
Could the penalties affect the Nets plans in this year’s Draft? For example:
- Might the Clippers decide to resist trade offers for the fifth pick, understanding their cache of picks will be diluted and so, hang on to what they got? That would limit the Nets ability to move up.
- Might they decide to trade the fifth pick for future firsts to lessen the pain of future losses? With the Nets having the most draft assets in the NBA by far, could that provide an opportunity for Brooklyn?
- Might they decide to use the fifth pick in a trade for a star like say Giannis Antetokounmpo, forgetting any semblance of an organic route contention, knowing how constrained that route will become? That would also eliminate the possibility of a trade and add a new player and new needs to the mix at the top of the Draft.
Yes, we are deep in the weeds and yes, it’s all speculation and yes, we don’t know when the league will move — it will be after the Finals, that’s for sure! Before the 2026 Draft which takes place days after the Finals conclude? But every team, particularly the Nets, wants to know what the commissioner is planning and how the Clips will respond to whatever law he lays down.
A final bit of speculation: Silver seems ornery of late. The proposed anti-tanking rules would permit to pull picks from teams that continue to lose on purpose. That was a bit of a shocker. Unlike Stern, he cajols and threatens rather than lowering the hammer. Maybe he plans to assert himself in general.
Joe Tsai’s sports empire expands
Back in July of last year, we catalogued Joe Tsai’s burgeoning sports empire, centered on Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment properties, but noting that he’s gone well beyond the NBA and WNBA, citing ownership positions in the NFL’s Dolphins, both lacrosse leagues, the LAFC of the MLS, e-sports, the Asian University Basketball League and chunks of various sports services like Fanatics, Michael Rubin’s $30 billion digital sports empire that has its hands in everything from apparel to gambling; and Genius Sports, which supplies sports data to virtually every pro league and owns Second Spectrum, every crazed basketball fan’s go-to site for analytics.
Since then, we’ve noted a few changes in his thinking. He sold his stake in LAFC, exiting a group of investors that included mostly Hollywood celebrity types, while adding two interesting new sports. Last month, Sportico noted that his family office, Blue Pool Capital, has invested in the NFL’s growing flag football program. No details on how much or how it’s structured, but the league is putting a lot of money in the league. Sportico explained why:
Flag football comes with many benefits when compared to traditional football. It doesn’t carry the same head injury concerns that worry many parents, it’s easier to adapt to smaller rosters and it’s grown popular among young women who wouldn’t otherwise play the sport. Participation in the U.S. grew 15% from 2019 through 2024, according to data from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association…
The league successfully pushed to have the sport added to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and has granted players approval to play in the Olympics. NFL teams have also issued grants to help launch collegiate programs.
He also joined David Blitzer, managing partner of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils, and Ralf Reichert, founder of the e-sports league ESL, in investing in the new international catamaran-racing league, SailGP, now in its fifth year. According to reports in Yacht Magazine, Tsai et al are part of the group that owns the German team license.
Blitzer has also joined Tsai and other sports investors in the Asian University Basketball League which Tsai helped found, as we reported earlier this year in another story on his ambitions to help revive Chinese basketball. Per Sportico. the group includes Tsai, Blitzer, former Bucks principal owner Marc Lasry and Yao Ming, the basketball Hall of Famer who previously headed the Chinese Basketball Association.
A valuation of the league, featuring colleges across greater Asia, isn’t known, but a person familiar with the fundraise characterized it as being at least eight figures. The Tsai family office, Blue Pool Capital, led the round, on top of the seed funding it provided AUBL last year.
The investments will allow the league to expand from 12 to 16 university teams and from six to eight countries, including basketball hotbeds of Australia and the Philippines.
As we noted when we wrote about Tsai’s sports investments last year, they are now roughly equal to his Alibaba holdings.
Why does this matter to Nets (and Liberty) fans? It shows that Tsai and his wife Clara Wu Tsai are more and more committed to sports and particularly BSE which among their sports investments is the cash cow.
Beyond their investments in catamarans and Asian basketball and flag football, the Tsais are mid-way through a $150 million enhancement of Barclays Center, in the early stages of the Liberty’s $80 million practice facility in Greenpoint and working on plans for an arena-centric entertainment district in Brooklyn. The latest iteration of that master plan is an announcement this week that BSE is converting the bottom floor of One Hanson Place, formerly the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, to yet another high-end restaurant. Appropriately, among those reporting on it was Brooklyn Magazine, also part of BSE.
Draft Sleeper of the Week
We’ve written about Mikel Brown Jr. on the site. Now it’s his turn to be featured here. Increasingly, the draftniks see him as the Nets pick at No. 6 if indeed that’s where the Nets pick on the night of June 23 at Barclays Center. Brown, who played for Louisville this past season, seems to tick off more boxes than his rival lead guards. He’s just short of 6’5” and although on the skinny side, he’s athletic and plays on both ends of the court.
Among the four guard prospects, he finished second in height (6’3.5”), first in standing reach (8’ 4.5”), wingspan (6’ 7.50”) in anthrometric measurements; second in both the shuttle run (2.89 seconds), third in 3/4-court sprint (3.24 seconds), and max vertical (39.5 inches). Kingston Flemings finished first in most of the athletic testing.
Among Moreover, Brown is high character. He knows what to say, too, about the prospect of playing in Brooklyn…
“It would be a great opportunity right there,” Brown told Brian Lewis at the Combine about being drafted by the Nets. “Just continuing to build relationships with them as the time goes on and continue to talk to my family and my circle and my agent and the people behind me.
“It’s something that we’re definitely interested in, and looking forward to building a relationship with [the Nets].”
“I honestly don’t pay attention to the mock drafts,” Brown said. “You never know where you’re going to go on draft night. If you want me to be honest with you, it’s all about which team fits you the best. … I just know what I can bring to a team right now. I’m more focused on myself rather than trying to compete with [others]. I’m competing with myself at this point.”
He’s also highly likeable, as Corey Taluba of No Ceilings told our Collin Helwig on the Brooklyn Podcast…
Perfect. A little touch of humility amid the promise of star power.
As a freshman, Brown averaged 18.2 points and 4.7 assists per game for the Cardinals. He scored 45 points during a 118-77 win over N.C. State, breaking Cooper Flagg’s ACC freshman single game scoring record. A troublesome back injury kept him out of the NCAA Tournament.
The 45-point explosion showed a wide variety of offensive skills including a quick release on his three and a willingness to drive the lane, a refreshing trait for a Nets guard.
He hits 10 threes and grabbed nine board as well. He tied the Louisville single-game scoring record as well as breaking the ACC’s rookie record.
The back injury is troublesome, although Brown says he feels fine and looked fine at the Combine. As ESPN reported at the time of the injury, his back bothered him more than once during the season. He missed four games prior to March Madness after missing eight earlier in the season.
That said, he did well in big games. N.C. State was 18-6 when he exploded for 45. He also scored 29 vs. Kentucky and 20 each in back to back vs. Baylor and SMU. As Taluba also told Helwig, he’s got that Trae Young/Steph Curry combo of 3-point shooting and high-level passing.
Will be there? That could indeed be an issue.
Final Note
No, the Nets are not moving back to New Jersey. Not now. Not ever. Period, end of story. The state of New Jersey, now headed by Governor Mikie Sherrill, did not support the Nets while in New Jersey.
It’s particularly bothersome since the Tsais are spending more than $140 million of their own money in upgrades at Barclays Center after renovating the abandoned Modell’s store across the street into a community basketball center. More millions. Then there’s the Liberty’s $80 million practice facility in Greenpoint. That’s commitment, one that New Jersey never ever made.
Brooklyn is home.
