The Nets are hiring longtime Turner president David Levy as their new CEO, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (via Twitter). According to Wojnarowski, Brooklyn is expected to make the hiring official after Joseph Tsai‘s purchase of the team is formally approved at the league’s upcoming Board of Governors meetings.
Levy spent 33 years with Turner before leaving his position with the company earlier this year shortly after AT&T’s acquisition of Turner and the rest of WarnerMedia. He started as an ad sales account executive with the company in 1986 before eventually ascending to the role of president in 2013.
Levy will be replacing Brett Yormark, who announced last month that he’d be stepping down from his position as CEO of the Nets and the Barclays Center. Yormark had a significant amount of control under Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, but with Tsai taking over as the controlling owner of both the Nets and their arena, it makes sense that he’d bring in his own lead executive.
In a press release issued a month ago announcing Tsai’s deal to buy out Prokhorov, the Nets confirmed that Yormark would oversee the transition to new ownership before “departing for a new role.”
The Nets are rising but for this guy, an NBA team CEO is quite a stepdown. I gotta like Levy because I don’t like AT&T.
When you’re the Nets there’s nowhere to go but up.