Despite their win last night, it’s been a rough few days for the Nets. The Knicks just clinched the Atlantic Division crown, Gerald Wallace is moping about being terrible and it’s looking more and more like they’ll play the Bulls in the first round of the playoffs, and no one wants that assignment. Now on top of all that, Jay-Z finally got bored being their public face and talisman of cool, and is selling his stake in the team so he can go be Arliss.
If you hadn’t heard, Jay started his own athletic management agency, Roc Nation Sports. And, per NBA rules, you can’t be a team owner and also represent players as their agent. And since there’s more and easier money to be made snookering the Yankees, it was probably an easy choice for Brooklyn’s most unceasing hustler. Whether or not this will stanch the flow of people who “adopted” the Nets as their team after moving here from a city with no basketball team is yet to be seen. However, if they all get together they can buy Jay’s share for $350,000, which is how much he had invested in the team. Maybe some of you can put a Kickstarter together? Or we can just wait until it ends up in the Craigslist “free” section.
Did Jay get bored being “a public relations ploy, a titanium golf club with ‘REALNESS’ lasered onto the shaft to beat people into accepting the billionaire oligarch who really runs the team, Mikhail Prokhorov,” like I characterized his ownership share last year? Who knows. But, Hov has gone back on his word before. Remember when he was supposed to have retired from rapping and then subjected us all to Kingdom Come? What did we do to deserve that? Anyway, despite helping design the uniforms for the players and the dance squad, and lugging the 40/40 Club to Barclays, Jay only had a minuscule financial stake in the team. And as R. Kelly can attest to, Jay-Z is not big on sharing.