Ex-Dealer To Co-Own NBA Team

As we all remember, Rush Limbaugh was considered too divisive to minority-own an NFL franchise, but it’s obviously okay for a former drug dealer-turned rap “artist” to co-own an National Basketball Association franchise.

Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz, in his introduction of part-owner of the basketball team, unknowingly referred to Jay-Z’s drug dealing past when he introduced him as “the man, who as he famously said, went from bricks to billboards.”

Let’s wish the Brooklyn Nets well (as they can’t help who their owners are) and hope their games aren’t as eventful as a rap music awards ceremony.

Oh, and the locals have voiced opposition to this new stadium in futility.

In theory, it should be everything that a progressive urban policy analyst like me would want from a new development. Atlantic Yards would create lots of new housing immediately adjacent to mass transit lines. It would be a mix of residential, commercial, retail, and entertainment space. And it would create new affordable housing and green space.

But, somehow, Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner got it all wrong. The project required two things to make it feasible: the use of eminent domain to acquire the property and hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies. Public officials justified both by proclaiming that the project would also create public benefits. But these public benefits were always dubious. And as the project has progressed, they have all but disappeared completely. Now it seems that the project will be a money loser for the city and will scar the face of Brooklyn for decades.

Jay-Z’s prior bad behavior paid off.

He’ll get to exploit his hood again, and liberals accomplished a land grab that would never occur in a white, middle class neighborhood. Unions and their workers will make out like bandits and the City and State of New York will have a temporary new source of revenue so they won’t have to make those tough decisions right away.

And one last question: A Marketing Quandary: How Do You Sell a 4-40 Team?

Another great day in New York.