Brooklyn Still Looks Dodgy for Nets

If New York City is basketball’s mecca, how come they can’t get anything right?

The New Jersey Nets, this league’s Little Orphan Annies, were sold again last week for an eye-popping $300 million to an ownership group headed by a heavyweight developer named Bruce Ratner that also includes the rapper Jay-Z.

Ratner is moving the team to a sparkling new Brooklyn arena at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. It’s not only a transportation nexus with two subway lines and a Long Island Railroad terminal, it’s the site on which Walter O’Malley wanted to build his new park for the Dodgers, a romantic touch that has captivated Gotham.

There’s one little problem: There is no arena and won’t be for years.

Ratner’s Frank Gehry-designed building has a target date of fall 2006, but even if Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the big commercial interests are behind the project, the land has yet to be secured and the approval process yet to be started.

Between now and that wildly best-case scenario, the Nets are stuck in the Meadowlands, where they will be even lamer ducks than they have been.

Of course, as Jason Kidd noted, “It’s not lame if you sell it for 300 and something million dollars.”

The New York Times’ Harvey Araton once proposed moving the Nets into Madison Square Garden, a double-occupancy plan like the one here, which didn’t hurt the Lakers and proved a stroke of genius for Donald T. Sterling, turning his Clippers from a joke into something resembling a real franchise.

This would work for the Nets, New York fans and the league, to say nothing of the hundreds of millions of dollars, private and public, it would save in unneeded new arenas.

Unfortunately, the Nets aren’t a no-threat tenant as the Clippers were, so it would be terrible for the house team, the Knicks, whose rebuilding project isn’t as far along.

To Garden President James Dolan, Brooklyn is too close and 2006 is too soon. Not only wouldn’t he take in the Nets -- former owner Lewis Katz made the call but was turned down -- Dolan reportedly lobbied behind the scenes to hold this deal up.

The Knicks’ resistance is expected to continue. An NBA official told Newsday that Dolan’s father, Charles Dolan, the chairman of the parent corporation, Cablevision, “is no stranger to political maneuvering in the metropolitan area ... and he’s not above using his contacts.”

Not that the Dolan Era hasn’t been good for New Yorkers, but besides presiding over the decline of the Knicks and Rangers, Cablevision dropped the mighty Yankees for the 2002 season in a dispute over rights fees with George Steinbrenner, blacking them out on Manhattan cable TV. So much for the theory that capitalism exists to move products smoothly to meet demand.

Meanwhile, across the Hudson River in New Jersey, news of the sale came as the end of a dream, or a long nap.

You can’t say they didn’t try. The state built the obligatory arena. After years of bumbling, the team appeared in the last two NBA Finals, but the fans never came. The Nets averaged about 14,500 in Continental Airlines Arena, which holds 20,049, the last two seasons.

Katz and co-owner Ray Chambers are being pilloried in New Jersey, but they were the ones who tried to go into downtown Newark, a project that foundered because the cash-strapped legislature was no longer bankrolling new arenas.

Unfortunately, the Net owners were also lured into partnership with the NHL Devils and the great ogre, Steinbrenner, who put together YankeeNets to provide programming for his cable alternative to Cablevision.

Steinbrenner put Devil boss Lou Lamoriello, a tyrant after his own heart, over the New Jersey operation. A chill fell over the organization, with Net employees obliged to wear white or blue dress shirts, shave mustaches and get family pictures in which they had facial hair off their desks. The press was barred from talking to assistant coaches.

Even as they took the San Antonio Spurs to six games in last spring’s Finals, the Nets were on the market. Having lost $10 million to $20 million last season, they began deferring commitments, such as extensions for Coach Byron Scott and Kenyon Martin.

Scott, who has incurred the wrath of Kidd, was brought back with only this season on his contract, making him a target whenever Kidd needed one. Team President Rod Thorn, who hired Scott, had his own problems after they had to get rid of Dikembe Mutombo’s $20-million deal and Alonzo Mourning’s health failed him.

Scott has stayed amazingly cool, recently noting wryly that when the sale went down, “Everybody that’s in this room will not be here.”

Ratner has yet to announce his immediate intentions. On the other hand, with everyone always waiting for the next losing streak to see if Scott survives, things couldn’t get any worse for the coach than they already were.

There are meltdown scenarios, but Ratner is expected to preserve the Nets in their current competitive state as they’re the centerpiece for his $2.5-billion Brooklyn project.

But that’s then and this is now. Suggesting the Nets’ predicament, former president Michael Rowe told the New York Times that Ratner should tell season-ticket holders: “If you like good pro basketball, you’ve still got your seat. Brooklyn may not happen and you don’t want to give up your tickets.”

Recent history suggests New York basketball fans will sit still for a lot, but that’s too much.

Ratner can get out of his Meadowlands lease in 2005. By then, Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum may seem like a better venue, as might a YMCA gym in Brooklyn.

Of course, in the meantime, what if the Nets make the Finals again?

Maybe the league can move the games into the Garden, which will be dark by then, Stephon Marbury or no Stephon Marbury.

Better yet, the league could buy the Garden, bring in the Nets, and fans in basketball’s mecca would live happily ever after. Or at least, more happily than they’re living now.

Faces and Figures

The Portland Trail Blazers are still trying to unload Rasheed Wallace but can take it to the Feb. 19 trade deadline, looking for the best deal. So far, General Manager John Nash has turned down Dallas, which offered Antawn Jamison and Tariq Abdul-Wahad, who makes $7.3 million a season through 2007, and the Knicks, who offered Keith Van Horn.... Nash reportedly wants Atlanta’s Shareef Abdur-Rahim, who makes $14 million a season but is up in 2005.

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At least he won’t make the same mistake twice: Amid speculation he was ready to trade Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler, new Chicago Bull GM John Paxson announced, “I’m going to err on the side of caution on those two big kids. We’ve invested 2 1/2 years in those two big kids, 3 1/2 years with Jamal [Crawford]. It’s disappointing where we’re at and I won’t make excuses. We’ve played poorly. But I’m not going to panic.” ... Paxson means he’s not going to panic again, having already traded Jalen Rose to Toronto for superfluous big men Antonio Davis and Jerome Williams and further burdening his salary cap, rather than gaining any relief.... You may have noticed Paxson didn’t actually rule out trading Crawford. New York’s Isiah Thomas wants him but is out of players to give up that anyone wants.

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The Pistons will have to win the occasional game if they and the Pacers are to be the rivalry that dominates the East. Detroit’s 13-game winning streak ended in last week’s 81-69 loss at Indiana, making Pacer Coach Rick Carlisle 3-0 against his old team. The bigger, rougher Indiana forwards, Jermaine O’Neal and Ron Artest, have outscored the younger, smaller Piston forwards, Mehmet Okur and Tayshaun Prince, 122-56, and outrebounded them, 48-28. Said Piston Coach Larry Brown: “We have two rookies [second-year players, actually] who looked like they really didn’t want to be out there.”

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In a swap of former Clippers, Portland got former phenom Darius Miles and Cleveland got Jeff McInnis. Cleveland wants to relieve LeBron James of playing point guard but wait till they find out McInnis isn’t big on giving up the ball.... Portland gets a free look at Miles, whose contract is up this summer, but wait till they find out he still can’t shoot.

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Toronto’s Vince Carter, told Golden State’s Jason Richardson, winner of the last two dunk contests, was hoping for a showdown with him at the All-Star game: “Well, maybe it will happen on PlayStation.”