The Co-Founder Of Alibaba Bought A 49 Percent Ownership Stake In The Brooklyn Nets, Who Were Valued At A Cool $2.3 Billion
ESPN- Joseph Tsai, the executive vice chairman and co-founder of Chinese e-commerce goliath Alibaba, has reached an agreement in principle to purchase a 49 percent minority stake in the Brooklyn Nets that includes the option to acquire controlling interest of the NBA franchise in 2021, league sources told ESPN. The purchase price will be based on a $2.3 billion valuation of the team, league sources said. The sales price of $2.3 billion eclipses the NBA-record $2.2 billion that Tilman Fertitta recently paid to purchase the Houston Rockets.
Mikhail Prokhorov will remain principal and operating owner of the Nets for an additional four years, with a presumption that he will sell his majority stake upon the triggering of Tsai’s option, league sources said.
Tsai, 53, will not oversee any basketball or business operations as a minority partner in the team, responsibilities that will stay with Prokhorov and his management team until he sells his majority stake, league sources said. The deal excludes the acquisition of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, sources said. Prokhorov owns the arena, and it’s expected that a new long-term lease for the Nets will be negotiated soon, league sources said.
God dammit this news pisses me off so fucking much. If the Nets, who are the little brother of New York hoops and are still climbing out of the ditch that Danny Ainge left them for dead in 4 years ago, are worth $2.3 billion, how much must the Knicks be worth? $10 billion? A trillion? A kajillion? There probably isn’t enough money on this planet to get James Dolan to sell the Knicks. He is Mr. Swackhammer while the Knicks and their fans are Michael Jordan, forever chained up and at the mercy of this fuck on Moron Mountain.
Not only that, but the Nets seem to have an actual plan for the franchise in place while the Knicks have Joakim Noah and Tim Hardaway on the books for more than $100 million. Not great! As much as I hate to admit it, I’m kinda sad that this all appears to be the beginning of the end for Prokhorov in New York. There was something fun about having a Russian billionaire own a New York team. Sure he pissed me off with the billboards right in The Garden’s eyeball
Had Jiggaman firing off tweets like this
And allegedly making Dolan force Donnie Walsh to trade for #Me7o just because of rumors the Nets were going to swoop in and steal him (the Nets ended up trading for Deron Williams instead). But all those moves aged poorly as fuck and hilarious to look back on now. Pre-marriage, kids, mortgage, death of happiness KFC got some great blogs out of Mikhy P losing yachts and jet skiing out of planes back in the day (likely many of them deleted by the DevNest). There is something that feels right about having a Russian supervillain in some aspect of your life like a Bond movie.
I did some hardcore research on Joe Tsai (checked his Wikipedia) hoping to uncover some fun facts about him and this is all I got.
Dude is vanilla as fuck. I guess I have to respect that all the people that bought counterfeit jerseys through AliExpress the last few years contributed 0.000000000000001% (bar over the last zero) to Tsai being able to buy half of an actual NBA team. And the thought that a website called Ali-fucking-baba could become a billion dollar powerhouse makes me laugh every time. But the fact remains that it’s only a matter of time until Joe Joe Tsai’s boring ass Wikipedia gets “majority Nets owner” added to his bio and the NBA entertainment world will be a worse place for it. I need Donnie to go to Taiwan and get some good dirt on Joey Moneybags. I can’t have the Nets being a well-run franchise with an owner that doesn’t say boo on some Brooklyn Spurs shit.
And while I will hate to lose him in my life, I will have this Vine ready for a man that was a worthy adversary on the back pages of the New York tabloids.