Nets End Their Season-opening 18-game Skid

The New Jersey Nets have ended their season-opening 18-game losing streak by downing the Bobcats 97-91 on Friday. The losing streak is an NBA record for the start of a season.

Nets Set NBA Record With 0-18 Start

The Nets were beaten 117-101 by the Dallas Mavericks for their 18th straight loss to start the season. That's a new NBA record. The Mavericks led by as many as 27 points in the second quarter.

GM Vandeweghe Will Coach Nets

General manager Kiki Vandeweghe is coming down from the front office to take over on the bench of the struggling New Jersey Nets. His first head coaching job should provide quite a challenge.

After 0-16 Start, Nets Fire Coach Lawrence Frank

The New Jersey Nets fired coach Lawrence Frank Sunday after losing their first 16 games during one of the worst starts in NBA history. Assistant Tom Barrise will coach the team Sunday night in Los Angeles against the Lakers.

Reaction to Prokhorov's Bid for Nets Is Mixed

On Wednesday. Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov announced a bid to buy the N.J. Nets. A day later he's getting criticized in his homeland and gaining support in the U.S..

Nets to Send Jefferson to Bucks in Three-Player Deal

By HOWARD BECK

The Nets plunged into a full-blown rebuilding effort Thursday, agreeing to send Richard Jefferson to the Milwaukee Bucks in a three-player trade. The Nets will receive forwards Yi Jianlian and Bobby Simmons.

The trade was not immediately announced, but the details were confirmed by the agent for Simmons. The players must all pass routine physical examinations before the deal is complete. No draft picks are involved.

Nets to Send Jefferson to Bucks in Three-Player Deal....

High Court Won’t Hear Appeal on Atlantic Yards

By Sewell Chan

The United States Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by 11 New York City property owners and tenants whose homes and businesses are scheduled to be taken over by the government and demolished to make way for the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.

The justices, without comment, declined to hear the plaintiffs’ argument that the seizure of their property would violate the United States Constitution. (A notation on the court’s case list indicated that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. would have voted to hear the case; such notations are not uncommon.) In February, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a trial judge’s dismissal of the landowners’ and tenants’ suit.

However, the plaintiffs, including Daniel Goldstein, the leader of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, which opposes the Atlantic Yards project, vowed to continue their legal fight by turning, once again, to the state courts. Matthew Brinckerhoff, the lawyer for plaintiffs, said in a statement:

High Court Won’t Hear Appeal on Atlantic Yards....

A Question Mark Looms Over 3 Expensive Projects

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

More than two years ago, the Bloomberg administration came up with an aggressively creative way to use tax-exempt bonds to finance two of the most expensive stadiums in the world, one for the Yankees in the Bronx and another for the Mets in Queens.

The Internal Revenue Service initially approved the use of the bonds for the ballparks, but quickly issued a proposal in 2006 to tighten the rules governing the use of tax-exempt bonds so that it would be more difficult, and perhaps impossible, for this kind of financing to be used again by profitable, private enterprises like professional sports teams.

Now state and city officials say the proposed rules are jeopardizing what is planned to be the city’s next big sports palace: the $950 million Barclays Center, an 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets that is the centerpiece of the huge residential and commercial complex in Brooklyn known as Atlantic Yards. The project’s developer, Forest City Ratner, says it plans to break ground on the arena this fall and has long expected to use tax-exempt financing to reduce its borrowing costs by tens of millions of dollars.

Barclays Center is expected to be the most expensive arena in the world, and the lack of tax-exempt financing would substantially increase its cost. The $4 billion Atlantic Yards project already faces delays because of litigation, a sluggish economy, the lack of commercial tenants and the reluctance of lenders to finance large real estate developments.

FULL ARTICLE....