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Joseph Tsai Finalizes Deal To Assume Full Ownership Of Nets, Barclays Center

August 16th, 2019 at 8:58am CST by Luke Adams

Nets minority shareholder Joseph Tsai has formally entered into an agreement with majority shareholder Mikhail Prokhorov to purchase full ownership of the franchise, the Nets confirmed today in a press release. As part of the deal, Prokhorov will also sell full ownership of the Barclays Center to Tsai.

The NBA’s Board of Governors still must officially approve the transaction, but that’s considered a mere formality. Tsai has long been expected to assume full ownership of the Nets since he bought a 49% stake in the team in April 2018. According to the press release, the arena and team sales are expected to close by the end of September.

“I’ve had the opportunity to witness up close the Brooklyn Nets rebuild that Mikhail started a few years ago,” Tsai said in a statement. “He hired a front office and coaching staff focused on player development, he supported the organization with all his resources, and he refused to tank. I will be the beneficiary of Mikhail’s vision, which put the Nets in a great position to compete, and for which I am incredibly grateful.”

According to reports from NetsDaily (Twitter link) and Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg, the total valuation for the Nets and the Barclays Center is $3.5 billion. The team – without the arena – was initially valued as $2.35 billion when Tsai bought his 49% stake last year.

Prokhorov will make out particularly well in the deal. When he assumed full ownership of the Nets and their arena in 2015, the team was valued at $875MM and the arena was valued at $825MM, for a total of $1.7 billion. The new total valuation of $3.5 billion is more than double that amount.

As we relayed on Thursday night, Nets CEO Brett Yormark is stepping down as team ownership changes hands. In their press release, the Nets confirmed that Yormark will oversee the transition to new ownership before “departing for a new role.”

Tsai, the co-founder and executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group, who is reportedly worth an estimated $9.9 billion, is expected to help the NBA grow its presence in China. He appears to have invested in the Nets at the right time — when he initially bought his 49% share last April, the team was coming off a 28-54 performance. The club boosted that mark to 42-40 last season, then made a huge splash in free agency by signing Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.

Nets CEO Brett Yormark Stepping Down

August 15th, 2019 at 9:26pm CST by clarkcrum

Brett Yormark, the lead executive for both the Nets and Barclays Center, is stepping down as the team’s top executive ahead of an impending ownership change that will see Taiwanese businessman Joseph Tsai become the franchise’s owner, reports Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg.

According to Soshnick, Yormark will announce that he’s resigning as CEO of BSE Global, the Nets’ parent company, tomorrow morning.

Yormark was an important figure in the Nets’ move from New Jersey to Brooklyn in 2012 and the development of Barclays Center. For the past seven years, he has presided over all facets of the team and Barclays Center, including operations, events, sales and marketing.

Soshnick also notes that Yormark departing alongside current majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov makes sense because of how much Prokhorov entrusted operations to Yormark. It’s unclear whether Tsai, who will likely want his own team put into place, would have given Yormark the control he desired.

New York Notes: Jordan, Durant, Nets, Bullock

July 27th, 2019 at 9:07am CST by marksuleymanov

After spending the latter part of last season with the Knicks, veteran center DeAndre Jordan was expected to be a potentially key part of New York’s plan to pursue Kevin Durant in free agency. Instead, Jordan ended up joining the crosstown rival Nets, along with Durant and Kyrie Irving.

Jordan, 31, is joining his fourth team in two seasons. For him, the decision to go with the Nets over the Knicks had a lot to do with the team’s oft-mentioned culture and commitment to player development.

“Not to knock the culture the Knicks are creating, but we like what Kenny [Atkinson]’s doing and Sean [Marks] has been awesome and the organization, from top to bottom, has been great,” Jordan said to The Gothamist (via New York Post). “So you want to be a part of something like that, especially when you have a chance to play with other great players and build something.”

Check out more New York notes below:

As for Durant, Jordan commented on his new Nets teammate in the same story. While it’s unlikely that Durant, coming off a torn Achilles, plays next season, Jordan is excited at what Brooklyn can accomplish when he does suit up. “We’ve got a lot of talent on this team,” Jordan said. “You know obviously Kevin had a tough injury, he’s going to be out for a while, but he’s progressing great, he’s recovering fast, we’ll be even better when we get him back and healthy.”
With the Nets‘ free agency success has come an increased interest in the team, Kavitha Davidson of The Athletic writes. After luring Durant and Irving to Brooklyn, Nets’ CEO Brett Yormark said ticket demands, social media activity and much more has skyrocketed. “This is an outbound business, not an inbound business, so when a thousand calls are starting to come in, you get pretty excited. You realize momentum is shifting,” Yormark said.
Knicks free agency signee Reggie Bullock may not return to the court until sometime in the new year, Marc Berman of the New York Post writes. A serious back injury forced the Knicks to rework their original deal with the 3-and-D specialist and his cervical disk herniation surgery could sideline him for upwards of six months, according to one leading orthopedic surgeon who spoke to Berman.

Nets Interested In Tommy Sheppard For GM Job

February 4th, 2016 at 7:58am CST by Chuck Myron

The Nets have requested permission to interview Wizards senior VP of basketball operations Tommy Sheppard for their GM vacancy, a source said to Brian Lewis of the New York Post. He joins Bryan Colangelo, Arturas Karnisovas and Gersson Rosas as contenders for the position, Lewis notes, having reported earlier this week that Danny Ferry was no longer a viable candidate. John Calipari is a long shot candidate, but remains a possibility because of his strong support from CEO Brett Yormark, according to Lewis.

Brooklyn already reportedly received permission to speak with Karnisovas and Rosas. Washington denied a June 2014 request from the Grizzlies to interview Sheppard, as Chris Vernon of 92.9 FM ESPN in Memphis reported at the time, so it’s no lock that the Nets will have the chance to pursue him. Sheppard has been with the Wizards for 12 years and assumed his current position under GM Ernie Grunfeld shortly before the 2013/14 season.

The Nets reportedly want to hire a GM before the trade deadline, which is two weeks from today. Assistant GM Frank Zanin has been running the front office since the team removed Billy King from the GM job nearly a month ago.

Atlantic Notes: Ainge, Colangelo, Calipari, Jackson

January 17th, 2016 at 3:02pm CST by Chuck Myron

Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge talks weekly with Suns GM Ryan McDonough, as McDonough tells Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe, and it’s clear that the pair maintain a strong relationship from their days in the Celtics front office. Boston and Phoenix hooked up on three trades last season.

“We worked together for a number of years and those guys have become some of my best friends,” McDonough said to Washburn about the Celtics brass. “Sometimes the calls are trade-related, sometimes the calls are social. I have a great relationship with those guys. I appreciate everything that Danny, [owners] Steve [Pagliuca], and Wyc [Grousbeck] did for my career, and regardless where I am the Celtics will always be my second-favorite team.”

See more from the Atlantic Division:

It’s obvious that Sixers chairman of basketball operations Jerry Colangelo is doing all the major decision-making now instead of GM Sam Hinkie, writes Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who wonders whether Hinkie will get credit should the team become successful in the near future.
A league source suggested to Fred Kerber of the New York Post that John Calipari will become a more appealing option to the Nets the longer they search for a GM and coach. The team isn’t seriously considering Calipari at this point, as Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck said Friday. Kerber also names team chairman Dmitry Razumov, board member Sergey Kushchenko, CEO Brett Yormark and Prokhorov’s holding company president Irina Pavlova as members of the team’s search committee. That adds further confusion to an existing set of conflicting reports about who’s conducting the search.
Kristaps Porzingis unsurprisingly gets an A-plus in the midseason grades that Marc Berman of the New York Post hands out for the Knicks, but team president Phil Jackson receives only a C-minus, even though his decision to draft Porzingis has worked out. A record around .500 won’t cut it, and some of the team’s signings, including the addition of Kevin Seraphin that coach Derek Fisher lobbied for, have been duds, Berman opines, justifying the low grade for Jackson.

Nets Eye Danny Ferry For GM Job

January 15th, 2016 at 8:31am CST by Chuck Myron

FRIDAY, 8:31am: Ferry “isn’t the likeliest candidate” for the position, a source told Brian Lewis of the New York Post.

THURSDAY, 7:58am: The Nets are looking at Danny Ferry as they search for their next GM, sources tell Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News (Twitter link). Bondy words his report a bit differently in his full story, where he writes that two sources outside the direct search told him they expect the team to look at Ferry as well as Bryan Colangelo, whom Marc Stein and Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.com reported earlier that the Nets are considering. Bondy’s tweet says the team is indeed looking at both Ferry and Colangelo. In any case, no one has emerged as the top candidate and the search has just begun, Bondy hears.

It’s no shock to see Ferry emerge as a candidate, as TNT’s David Aldridge pointed to the ties between Ferry and former GM Billy King, who remains with the organization. The Nets are indeed consulting King about the candidates to replace him in the GM job, Bondy hears from sources, confirming an earlier report that owner Mikhail Prokhorov had downplayed. Ferry’s father, Bob Ferry, serves as a scout for the Nets, and Prokhorov interviewed Danny Ferry for the GM job in 2010 before hiring King.

The younger Ferry comes with the baggage of the racially charged comments he uttered in a 2014 conference call while GM of the Hawks that led to a prolonged leave of absence and ultimately a buyout that ended his three-year tenure in Atlanta this past spring. Ferry nonetheless earned plaudits for his construction of last season’s 60-win Hawks team, and his close ties to the Spurs organization, where he served as a player and later a front office official, can’t hurt. He put together rosters that won 66 and 61 games in back-to-back years as GM of the Cavs, a job he held from 2005 to 2010.

John Calipari has also drawn mention as a candidate for the Nets’ front office vacancy as well as their open coaching job, but Prokhorov indicated that he’d rather have separate people in those positions. CEO Brett Yormark, a Calipari advocate, is one of three Nets officials conducting the search, according to Bondy, along with team chairman Dmitry Razumov and board member Sergey Kushchenko, who’s a trusted aide to Prokhorov. That conflicts with a report from Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com, who wrote that Razumov and Irina Pavlova, president of Prokhorov’s ONEXIM Sports and Entertainment holding company, were in charge of the search. In any case, Prokhorov wants to hire a GM before he hires a coach, league sources tell Bondy.

Do you think the Nets should hire Ferry? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.