Rodman told the his unlikely new buddy, "You have a friend for life," after watching a game together in Pyongyang.

No word yet if the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army feels as warmly toward his buddy, or if this is like the time that "Johnny Mountain" and Avery Jessup explained the food and weather situation on 30 Rock?

But let's be real: These two were made for each other. They both had weird relationships with their dads--Kim Jong-il sent his youngest son to live in or around Switzerland until the early 90s, while Rodman didn't talk to his father for 42 years until they met during a game last July in the Philippines. They both have dealt with the trials of a hastily-arranged marriage. And they both are into body modification. And look, they've both had some bad press, but they know at the end of the day the important thing is to sit down, let off some steam, and watch Michael Ri play some b-ball.

Patrick Ewing circa 1985. (Photo: Getty)

After over a decade playing and coaching in other cities, Hall of Fame center Patrick Ewing might have a shot to return to New York, the home where he spent fifteen seasons building his Hall of Fame career with the Knicks. However, the speculation surrounding Mr. Ewing doesn't involve his old team, it is centered on the Knicks' new outerborough rivals, the Brooklyn Nets, who are in the midst of a sudden makeover of their coaching staff and could have newfound room for Mr. Ewing on their bench.

Yesterday afternoon, the Nets abruptly announced the firing of head coach Avery Johnson, mere weeks after he was named Eastern Conference Coach of the Month. Mr. Johnson's surprise departure came after a dismal stretch that saw the Nets essentially obliterate a promising start to their first season in Brooklyn by getting just three wins and ten losses during the first few weeks of December. In the wake of Mr. Johnson's exit, assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo was named interim head coach, but in a press conference about Mr. Johnson's firing Nets general manager Billy King acknowledged the team could pursue other options.

"PJ will be the interim coach at this time. Will we look other places? We may, but at this time, PJ's our interim head coach," Mr. King said. "The remaining staff will stay with him and we'll go forward from there."

Mr. Ewing's name is among those that have surfaced as a top contender to replace Mr. Johnson. After his playing career Mr. Ewing served as an assistant coach for the Houston Rockets and for the Orlando Magic. In Orlando, he worked under coach Stan Van Gundy and was seen as a key part of the team's 2009 trip to the NBA Finals and instrumental in helping groom the team's star big man Dwight Howard. Mr. Ewing has been out of a job since the Magic fired Mr. Van Gundy back in May. He owns a house in New Jersey and has expressed interest in coaching in the city he called home for over a decade.

Not only does Mr. Ewing have a strong fan base in New York, but his skill set as a specialist for coaching big men would seem well-suited to a Nets team where defense has been one of the main weaknesses. According to the Brooklyn Game, which analyzed the possibility the Nets could give Mr. Ewing a coaching job, his background as a former star and his lack of an existing "system" might prevent him from clashing with the team's star point guard, Deron Williams, who has earned a reputation as a "coach-killer" over the years that fueled rumors he may have played a role in Mr. Johnson's demise.

Mr. Ewing could also potentially join the Nets as an assistant coach. Another name that has been floated for the head coaching job is Mr. Ewing's old boss, Mr. Van Gundy. Though he worked with Mr. Van Gundy in the past, the ex-Orlando coach is reportedly not interested in the job and Mr. Ewing has focused his job search efforts on hunting for a head coaching gig after his years as an assistant.

Signing one of the biggest Knicks icons would certainly help the Nets in the budding rivalry between the two teams. It also might be satisfying to Mr. Ewing who reportedly felt snubbed when the Knicks offered him a D-League coaching job earlier this year. However, the reports of bad blood between Mr. Ewing and the Knicks may be exaggerated. He has attended multiple Knicks games this season including at least two this month.

Though he may have repaired his relationship to the Knicks, there are some signs that Mr. Ewing is also cozying up to Nets management. Mr. Ewing was seen in the Nets' locker room after a game against the Celtics. Another interesting sign came on Twitter from Mr. Ewing's son, Patrick Ewing Jr., who has re-tweeted multiple messages saying his father should join the team (including one from this reporter, who, full disclosure, is a fan of both the Nets and Mr. Ewing).

After the Nets' loss to the Golden State Warriors December 7, the Observer asked Mr. Johnson whether he would consider having Mr. Ewing join his coaching staff and the ex-coach revealed Mr. Ewing had recently seen Mr. King.

"Patrick is a great guy, I think he and Billy were at a fundraiser the other night for a lady that works with the NBA," said Mr. Johnson.

Despite Mr. Johnson's praise for Mr. Ewing, he characterized the coaching staff as "pretty set" and said the team hadn't discussed bringing the Knicks legend on board.

"You know, that's something we haven't talked about," Mr. Johnson said. "You know, our coaching staff is pretty set right now, but we definitely respect what Patrick did as a player and, you know, I think he's had a pretty good run as a coach with his work in Houston and in Orlando."

After we asked Mr. Johnson about Mr. Ewing, we were angrily chastised by a Nets executive who accused us of asking a question "that no one gives a shit about." Now, three weeks and seven losses later, the team's coaching staff is anything but "set" and perhaps the Nets backoffice is indeed starting to give a shit about Mr. Ewing.

Deron Williams getting a shot past Carmelo Anthony during the Nets' win over the Knicks Monday night. (Photo: Getty)

Back in high school, one of my favorite clothing staples was a Knicks jersey adorned with Latrell Sprewell’s number eight. I wistfully remembered this as I pulled a black jersey bearing the same digit from the rack in a Midtown Modell’s last month. This time, the number on my back would represent a player on a different team, Deron Williams, the star point guard of the nascent Brooklyn Nets.

My purchase of Mr. Williams’s jersey was the culmination of a painful decade-plus process in which I chose to abandon the basketball franchise I fervently rooted for throughout my childhood. Though the Knicks spent that period in an agonizing annual ritual of unsuccessful postseason runs, my defection wasn’t about the dearth of championships. Even when the Knicks of the ’90s lost, they were in contention—they were part of a zeitgeist that included Spike Lee’s trash-talking commercials and garish retro blue-and-orange gear. They weren’t winners, but the effort always made for a fun ride. No, my break with the team didn’t coincide with one of their heartbreaking early postseason exits; it began in 2000, when they unceremoniously traded my basketball idol, Patrick Ewing, the center who had been with the team for as long as I had conscious memories.

Mr. Ewing had stuck with the Knicks throughout his career, despite the organization’s repeated failure to assemble a championship-caliber team around him. His loyalty cost him a ring that other players with a fraction of his talent were able to earn in more healthy institutions, and yet as soon as age began to weaken his formidable frame, he was shipped out rather than being permitted to retire gracefully.

Despite my anger over the mistreatment of Mr. Ewing, I stayed true to the Knicks. For me, the straw that broke the camel’s back came a year later in 2001, when two of the team’s least dependable and most overpaid players, Allan Houston and Charlie Ward, made a series of shockingly anti-Semitic statements in the presence of a reporter at a team Bible-study session. As a Jewish guy from Brooklyn, I was disgusted.

In a fit of high-school rage, I created a “Knicks fan’s hit list,” and taped it to my bedroom wall. It included all of the people I held responsible for the series of indignities I had suffered while rooting for the team—from Mr. Ward and Mr. Houston to the back-office executives I blamed for, among other things, dumping Mr. Ewing, failing to draft hometown hero Ron Artest in 1999 and going years without signing a true starting point guard. I vowed not to support the team again until all the scoundrels on my list were gone from Madison Square Garden. Then I waited, always planning a return to Knicks fandom when the time was right.

Because of my time-out from cheering on the Knicks, I was a detached observer as Cablevision heir James Dolan took on a major management role and made a series of missteps that caused the team to vanish from postseason contention. Eventually, all the miscreants on my hit list moved on. The final holdout was Mr. Houston, who initially retired in 2005 and made an aborted comeback attempt with the team in 2008. Soon after, the Knicks seemed to be salvaging themselves from the hoops scrap heap with the signing of stars Amar’e Stoudemire (a Jew!) and Carmelo Anthony. Though I had long since stopped following basketball religiously, I began to very casually root for my old team again.

In 2010, with the legal battles over the Barclays Center finally finished, it became clear the Nets were definitely headed to my home borough. A major-league sports franchise in Brooklyn was something I had dreamed of as a child, but my enemies had been vanquished, and the idea of shifting my sports loyalties was hard to stomach.

Last year, along with many other New Yorkers, I was fully pulled back into the Knicks’ orbit as point guard Jeremy Lin led the team on an improbable and electrifying run. For the first time in over a decade, I even tried to go to a game. Alas, I found the home court at the Garden was sold out, inaccessible for less than $175.

Just when it seemed the Knicks were beginning to win back the hearts of Big Apple basketball fans, our hopes for the team were crushed when management made a series of baffling offseason moves that included losing the likable Mr. Lin and signing a slew of past-their-prime players, including convicted domestic abuser Jason Kidd.

Like all massive train wrecks, the Knicks’ self-destruction this past summer was utterly riveting. I devoured every bit of the coverage and, in the course of this masochistic sports-page reading, learned that one of the villains from my rogues’ gallery was still lurking around the locker room. Mr. Houston had since become the team’s general manager and was yet again participating in the ruination of the Knicks, this time from the back office rather than the backcourt. I was done.

And conveniently, I had a new team to embrace, just a little over a mile from my house.

I know the Nets aren’t championship-caliber yet, but it is clear they are building a solid foundation and, more important, they represent my motherland.

As I contemplated this monumental decision, I sought the counsel of an old classmate, Isaac. Though we had seen each other only sporadically in our post-college years, he had been seated next to me in the nosebleeds during most of the Knicks games I attended in high school. When I called him, I explained that I was thinking about defecting to the Nets. Though Isaac is a Manhattanite, he admitted he was also wavering, and said he would attend a Nets game this season to “see how it feels.”

A little over a week ago, I went to the Barclays Center for my first Nets game. Though the team has been using the Jumbotron to encourage a variety of chants from the audience, the only cheer that seems to stick is fans simply shouting “Brooklyn.” It felt right. I was home.

After Monday night’s win over the Knicks, I received two text messages from Isaac, who, for now, is sticking with our old team.

“Oh man,” he wrote. “Oy. Congrats.”

My reply consisted of just two words: “Join us!”

He has yet to answer.

The logo sheet, above, comes from the team's official site. In a post by Nets blogger Ben Couch, it's explained that rapper and Nets investor Jay-Z designed the new logo, which they apparently put some ideas into:

[The logo retains] the shield from its previous iteration, and adds that iconic Brooklyn 'B' to the basketball that has been part of every logo since the franchise's 1967 inception as the Americans. The Dodgers had their lettermark, and the Nets have added another model for the borough to bear. "Brooklyn," of course, is spelled out below.

Of course, this wouldn't be an unveiling without a promotional press outing, of which there naturally was: At a Modell's across the street from the Nets' new stadium in downtown Brooklyn, a bunch of people stood in line for free tickets and to look at new shirts. One Knicks fan from Queens told the Daily News he's not switching teams, but:

"Brooklyn is easier to get to," he said. "I'm hoping for tickets that are more affordable as well."

Of course somebody from Queens would mistake something in Brooklyn for the potential to be less expensive than something in Manhattan.

This is the entire illusion that has helped Brooklyn more or less conquer the universe, and it is wrong. But hey, here's for hope and a neat new expensive basketball team with neat new shirts (replete with the inevitable "Brooklyn's Finest" T-Shirt swag for sale). We'll be grabbing one.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

While in the neighborhood, he took a few minutes to bring back something special to Miami with him: Bragging rights for "murking" the tough-talkin' street ballers of SoHo's Thompson Street playground. Via Animal New York, who found the video of it, SportsCenter, look out:

Of note: In their item on the matter, Page Six identified the park Wade played in as Tompkins Square Park, as opposed to the Thompson Street Playground, where Wade actually was. Confidential to Page Six: Not all grungy parks downtown look/are the same.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Hmmm... do I take the pay cut?

On Sept. 2, Mikhail Prokhorov, billionaire owner of the soon-to-be-Brooklyn Nets, announced he would consider a run for the Russian presidency this winter if the political party he created, Right Cause, does well in parliamentary elections in December. (The Transom first learned of this from a friend who is a journalist in Moscow, and confirmed it with English-language reports of Mr. Prokhorov’s comments.)

So, if Mr. Prokhorov, the central-casting projection of modern muscular Russia, does, in fact, edge out his friend Vladimir Putin or Mr. Putin’s hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, what will it mean for the borough’s b-ball? Can one man be the leader of a superpower and the owner of a powerhouse at the same time?

Yes. There is nothing in the N.B.A.’s charter that precludes a foreign head of state from owning a team, though none ever has (the closest analogy might be U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, who has owned the Milwaukee Bucks since 1985; George W. Bush sold his stake in baseball’s Texas Rangers before he became president).

Where it gets a tad dicey for a 46-year-old President Prokhorov is that he would have to spend much of his time in his country rather than, say, in David Walentas’s Clock Tower penthouse in Dumbo, or some other suitably baronial domain for an oligarch abroad.

“It would very much change his ownership style with the Nets,” said Robert Boland, a clinical associate professor of sports management at N.Y.U. “He’s a very hands-on guy. From everything that I’ve observed about him, he likes to be involved firmly, he likes to own the franchise.”

Mr. Boland said that in sports ownership the best owners are either highly involved or not really involved at all, turning over management to pros. Seizing a middle-ground tends to breed ineptitude. (The Dolans and the Knicks, anyone? The Wilpons and the Mets?) So if a freshly elected Mr. Prokhorov had to shed management responsibilities vis-à-vis the Nets, it would not necessarily hurt the franchise, Mr. Boland said.

In fact, his presidency could help the N.B.A.

“The N.B.A. is ripe to expand globally,” Mr. Boland said. “Suddenly, here’s an N.B.A. owner with a hugely important political role in Europe and Asia. He might become very important to the N.B.A. in terms of expansion or movement abroad.”

And, somewhere, Marty Markowitz lays out a suit for the inauguration.

tacitelli@observer.com :: @tacitelli

Photo for MTV2 Presents: Converse Band of Ballers by Brad Barket of PictureGroup

On Monday, The Observer braved the heat and schlepped down to the LES home of the City’s second-oldest Catholic high school, La Salle Academy. The alma mater of pro-baller Ron Artest was an all-too-appropriate venue for the filming of the third-annual Converse Band of Ballers 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament to air on MTV2 in mid-August.

Despite being a celebrity basketball tournament on paper, the event ran itself in a fashion similar to a dog fight with each team’s celebrity leaders sitting on the sidelines fanning themselves to keep cool while their streetballer pit-bulls fought it out gladiator-style in the 100+ degree gymnasium amidst a crowd of aggressive fans, and one overzealous commentator.

We found the Brooklyn-bred, indie rock group Matt & Kim in a classroom, away from the mêlée, notably chipper and dry after their first game.

“Have you seen his body? He’s a got a good body, and that’s how I judge basketball players.” Kim Schifino told The Observer with a giggle, when we asked her if her teammate (Community star and rapper) Donald Glover was as good at basketball as he is at everything else.

Ms. Schifino and her partner Matt Johnson came to Monday’s tournament ready to compete—as was evident when Matt approached us wearing what he told us were “custom extra-short shorts,” which were noticeably shorter than Kim’s shorts.

The indie-rock-famous duo catapulted to fame from humble Brooklyn-band beginnings—one of their albums is even named after Williamsburg’s Grand Avenue—and like Williamsburg, have grown out of simple hipster-fandom to mainstream recognition.  On a similar note, The Observer recently spotted a Lamborghini in Williamsburg. When we told the pair about the incident and asked whether they were now “part of the problem,” Matt admitted that while they have yet to see the car in question, yes they are now part of the problem, as they recently drove down Bedford Avenue with the top down in a white Chrysler Sebring Convertible. He noted: “Kim was so embarrassed she got in the back of the car, laid down, and hid.”

Contrary to her absurdly-uniformed partner, Ms. Schifino was quite serious about the tournament, “I grew up following the Celtics. My mom even had a Larry Bird poster in the house” she told us, adding “Larry Bird was not an attractive guy, but I’m certain my mom would’ve fucked him.”

Ms. Schifino’s pro-baller attitude carried onto the court and it was quickly apparent that Team Brooklyn didn’t come to Band of Ballers to mess around. Despite having close to no basketball experience themselves, Matt and Kim do have some friends in the game. In addition to Mr. Johnson, Ms. Schifino, and Mr. Glover, Team Brooklyn consisted of Jack “Black Jack” Ryan, a Brooklyn native and streetball icon, Pat The Roc, the self-proclaimed “King of Streetball,” and Ryan “Special FX” Williams, who played in college at St. John’s University and is presently an actively touring professional streetballer.

As The Observer watched from the sidelines it became startlingly clear that the tournament itself seemed to be less a tournament between artists, and more a contest to see who was better connected to actual “ballers.” Outside of the misinformed Team Swell—rap group Chiddy Bang, who were thoroughly dominated by their competition—none of the other recording artists made it onto the hardwood to compete in Monday’s tournament.

Equally misinformed, Lil Twist—the seventeen-year-old artist sent to represent the notoriously-elusive Lil Wayne as the replacement captain of the Young Money Entertainment team—seemed slightly confused as to the nature of the event. The miniature rapper wore sunglasses, a large diamond-studded link chain, and knee-high polka-dot socks. Mr. Twist didn’t play. He just sat on the bench, the tags still dangling from his new converse sneakers.

"While we have always respected Carmelo as a player, when we met the other night--I enjoyed that meeting, liked him a lot--it was clear he wanted to come to our city and play for our franchise," Mr. Dolan said.

The emphasis was his.

After monopolizing the five boroughs for the past five decades, Mr. Dolan's Knicks are suddenly on the defensive.

Crowding the city's basketball spotlight is an outsize Russian billionaire, Mikhail Prokhorov, who, in May of last year, purchased the lowly New Jersey Nets--the vagabond stepchild now bound for Brooklyn--and declared, in all his Bond-villain blandness, that he would "turn Knicks fans into Nets fans."

As Mr. Anthony dangled from Denver and the Knicks demurred on sealing a deal, Mr. Prokhorov made a last-minute, over-the-top offer that included the Nets' best player, its top prospect and four first-round draft picks, all in the hopes of denying the Knicks their biggest swap since Bernard King in the early 1980s, and luring the Brooklyn-born Mr. Anthony back home. 

Mr. Dolan, in turn, went all in, throwing in a package of young talent that seemed to belie the patient, piece-by-piece approach that had dragged the franchise back to respectability under his resident basketball guru, general manager Donnie Walsh.

"The Nets are trying to hang in the ball game, that's why we had to give up so much," said Walt "Clyde" Frazier, who sat in the front row alongside other Knicks legends during Mr. Anthony's introductory press conference.

"There's clearly a rivalry going," said Robert Boland, a professor of sports management at N.Y.U., who said the greatest threat to any franchise is losing the exclusivity of its market. "It seems that Prokhorov is not going to let this thing go without a battle. He's going to fight in the streets for this one."

He already has, actually.

Shortly after buying the team, Mr. Prokhorov plastered a 225-foot billboard of himself and co-owner Jay-Z--under the headline "The Blueprint for Greatness"--in plain view of the Knicks' offices at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, and rented his own office space at Aby Rosen's Seagram Building in midtown.

In October, Mr. Dolan returned the volleys with a massive billboard of star forward Amar'e Stoudemire--under the banner "BROOKLYN REPRESENT"--just a few blocks from the Nets' nascent arena at Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards.

The budding rivalry stands to be one of the more colorful conflicts in the annals of New York sports.

Mr. Dolan is squat, with a big belly and a bush of brown hair above a face straight out of a Thomas Nast cartoon; he grew up on Long Island, where he now lives with his wife and children, and is a proud teetotaling 12-stepper.

Mr. Prokhorov is a slender 6-foot-8, with a physique carefully refined by twice-daily workouts, who calls his 21,500-square-foot mansion on the outskirts of Moscow his "bachelor pad," and in 2007 was detained for 88 hours in France for allegedly flying in Russian prostitutes. He frequents Moscow's clubs but claims never to have consumed more than a single sip of vodka.

Mr. Dolan nixed his dreams of being a rock star while a student at SUNY-New Paltz, but still toils in a blues band, J.D. and the Straight Shot, and was an avid sailor and competitive yachter before giving up the sport a few years ago.

Mr. Prokhorov did an obligatory stint in the Soviet Army as a youth, and still enjoys shooting AK-47s; he eschews yachting for a 300-pound jet ski.

Mr. Dolan mostly shuns the media, running what has been characterized in the past as a draconian press operation that closely monitors nearly every word uttered by Garden employees and bounds departing ones with strict nondisclosure agreements.

Mr. Prokhorov claims to have funded an opposition newspaper in the mining town he controlled--just to keep a healthy dose of dissent--and, at times, he might be too revealing for his own good. Last year, he showed off his favorite Kalashnikov to 60 Minutes, and before an interview last month, he challenged a reporter to match him in the eye-hand exercises of Tescao, a Tibetan martial art.

(A Knicks spokesman said Mr. Dolan and other Garden officials were unavailable for comment. Mr. Prokhorov was heli-skiing in British Columbia; a spokesperson said he was unavailable to speak.)

Mr. Dolan was groomed from a young age to take over his father's Cablevision empire, selling subscriptions and decamping to Cleveland to start a sports radio station, all while preparing to succeed his father as CEO.

Mr. Prokhorov was reared in a small apartment in Soviet Russia, and his first business venture involved stone-washing jeans to sell during perestroika, followed by a rise through the ranks of post-Soviet banking before coming to dominate the Russian mining market.

They share at least one common trait: Both want to rule New York's basketball market.

Mr. Dolan would very much like to counteract the past decade of futility, one that left an impression that he was more concerned with the parent company's bottom line than with hanging new banners from the Garden rafters.

"Jim Dolan has always taken, to me, unnecessary hits as far as wanting to win," said Jeff Van Gundy, the Knicks' coach from 1996 until his resignation in 2001. "Maybe you question the methodology, but he's always wanted to win."

"He's had such a negative reputation for so long, in terms of what the Knicks haven't done in recent years, I think he knew above all else that he had to get this deal done," said Wayne McDonnell Jr., a sports business professor at N.Y.U., of the Anthony trade.

For Mr. Dolan, adding Mr. Anthony helps the entire MSG empire. It boosts the television ratings, ups the in-stadium advertising fees and helps book the luxury boxes--all of which help to offset the nearly $800 million in renovations the arena is undergoing.

The challenge for Mr. Prokhorov is to somehow chip away at the prestige, and now the buzz, of Mr. Dolan's monopoly.

He has brazenly guaranteed a championship within five years, and--even as the team watched Mr. Anthony slip away--he crowed about the Nets' impact on the deal. "I think we've made a very good tactical decision to force Knicks [sic] just to pay as much as they can," he told CNBC, even before the trade was officially completed.

A few hours before the Knicks' press conference to introduce Mr. Anthony, the Nets announced a new star of their own: Deron Williams, acquired in an out-of-nowhere swap with Utah that was certain to crowd the next day's headlines.

"We all love to have rivals," said Mark Cuban, the outlandish Dallas Mavericks owner and fellow billionaire to whom Mr. Prokhorov is often compared, in an email to The Observer. "He is a good guy," Mr. Cuban wrote. "Smart. Passionate. Competitive. Most importantly, he is witty as shit. He loves a good battle of the words, even if it isn't his native language." (Mr. Prokhorov is unlikely to match the noisy courtside presence of Mr. Cuban. A person familiar with the plans said Mr. Prokhorov is assembling an in-house retreat for himself 10 times the size of a standard luxury box "for he and his Russian friends.")

The Knicks' official position is to feign a lack of concern. "While we always respect any competition, the Garden will always be the Garden," the company said in a statement.

And, on the night of Mr. Anthony's debut, the Garden was very much the Garden again, for the first time in recent memory.

In the concourse, fans pulled brand-new "Anthony" jerseys over their shirt
s, and the crowd stayed on its feet for the layup lines, snapping cell phone shots of Mr. Anthony in his new uniform.

Then the arena went pitch black, Diddy's "Coming Home" floated over the PA, and a quotation from Mr. Anthony flashed on the scoreboard. "I was born May 29, 1984 in Brooklyn, N.Y."

If Mr. Prokhorov has any hope of capturing the city's affection, he must first conquer Brooklyn, which could prove a rocky beachhead.

The rosiest scenario has the Nets replacing the bygone baseball Dodgers as the borough's pro sports heroes, but the prospect of a glorious homecoming is quite a bit more complicated.

"For someone like me, who's a Brooklynite through and through, it's going to create dilemmas," said Senator Charles Schumer, who was born and still lives a short bicycle ride from the new arena site. "Because I've been a Knicks fan all along, and I guess I'll have to wait until they arrive and see what happens. But my inclination is to stick with the Nets"--he shook his head--"with the Knicks."

The team's arrival has already suffered years of bad press, thanks to the protracted battle over the $4 billion development at the Atlantic Yards site in downtown Brooklyn. Before a series of court rulings resolved it and construction started in earnest last year, the battle pitted neighborhood activists, many of them newcomers who spawned the borough's gentrification, against the team's former owner Bruce Ratner, the site's developer.

The bitterness lingers.

Eric McClure, the founder of Park Slope Neighbors, said the only thing that might possibly draw him to the arena was "a Beatles reunion."

"Can Prokhorov sway Brooklynites to root for a different team?" mused Daniel Goldstein, a leader of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, the leading Atlantic Yards opposition group, in an email to The Observer from India. "If he pays them enough."

"For the hard-core anti-Yards people, I don't see them coming around that fast," conceded Borough President Marty Markowitz, a longtime supporter of relocating the team. "But I see their kids coming around. And that will motivate them."

For the majority of Brooklynites, the prospect of Nets fandom is likely to rest on the simple question of whether the team is worth watching.

"I've been a lifelong Knick fan, but winning changes everything, so if they start to win, they'll like 'em," said Larry Chertoff, a Park Slope dad, who was leaving the Atlantic Center mall on Sunday afternoon. "I don't see myself switching allegiances, but a couple years ago, when the Nets were pretty good and they had [Jason] Kidd and [Richard] Jefferson, I went out to Jersey to see them, and I enjoyed them, so you never know."

In that regard, Mr. Prokhorov seems to inspire more hope for a competitive product than Mr. Ratner ever did.

"Bruce Ratner, who I respect enormously and who made this possible--after I put the pressure on--he was never a jock, I was never a jock," Mr. Markowitz said. "This man eats and breathes basketball. He's looking at it, I don't think as an investment, as in only dollars and cents; I think he's looking at it as being a good owner."

Mr. Markowitz cited the recent trade for Mr. Williams and said he hoped the new point guard would help lure a winning team to the borough. "We'll have his back, that's for sure. He'll learn how lucky he is to be wearing a Brooklyn Nets uniform in not too long from now."

But first the team must get him there; Mr. Williams can opt out of his contract in the summer of 2012, just when the franchise is set to occupy the brand-new Barclays Center.

On Monday evening, Newark did its best to woo him.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé sat in the Prudential Center's front row; fans were showered with complimentary Williams T-shirts; the opening montage had been recast with his highlights; even the mascot, an overgrown silver fox, was wearing his No. 8 jersey.

Though the crowd was spotty--despite being within a few hundred seats of a sellout--the fans who were there gave him a rousing ovation.

Mr. Williams high-fived his teammates with a stone face. "I can't really give any assurances or say that I'll be here, when I don't know what the future holds," he had said in his first press conference last week, when asked about his long-term future with the Nets. On Friday, Mr. Prokhorov cut short his heli-skiing trip to fly to San Antonio and welcome him to the organization, which hopes he'll be a cornerstone capable of luring other top talent.

While both teams tinker with their rosters over the next 16 months, the climax of this cold war won't come until the summer of 2012, when Mr. Williams and two other superstars--Orlando's Dwight Howard and New Orleans' Chris Paul--are set to hit the open market.

But with the NBA renegotiating its labor contract this summer, it's unclear just how much room Messrs. Dolan and Prokhorov will have to maneuver around each other. Will teams be able to exert a contractual clamp on their free agents like football's franchise tag? And will a strict salary cap restrict the ability of both to spend freely? No one knows, and the pessimists predict a long lockout as the two sides try to hash it out.

For Knicks' fans, though, the larger, looming question is who might be making the basketball decisions in 2012.

At Mr. Dolan's press conference, after introducing Mr. Anthony, the owner launched into an unprompted screed against rumors that he had overruled Mr. Walsh and was instead heeding the counsel of Isiah Thomas, Mr. Walsh's predecessor, who stuffed the team with an underperforming cast of bloated contracts.

"While Isiah Thomas is a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine, he was not at all involved in this process," Mr. Dolan volunteered to the crowd. "The trade was a complete effort with Donnie, Mike and I," he said, as Mr. Walsh, whose contract expires in June, sat awkwardly next to him on another stool and head coach Mike D'Antoni stared straight ahead with his arms crossed.

"I'm a die-hard Knick fan," said Shawn Mundinger, a season-ticket holder who was wearing a Ronnie Turiaf jersey on Wednesday night. He commutes to the Garden from Westhampton, even though he has to wake up at 5 a.m. for his shifts as a sanitation worker. "But if [Mr. Thomas] was ever to come back, in any way, shape or form, and the Knicks really aren't a contender, I think I'd give up my seats. I know a lot of people who feel the same way. He's just toxic, always has been."

"In my opinion, Dolan will not bring Isiah Thomas back," said Dan Klores, the veteran PR man turned documentarian, who met Mr. Walsh in 1967, and then helped him land the Knicks job four decades later. "Donnie went through the two worst years of his professional career, and it would be wonderful to have him see the fruits of his labor."

Mr. Klores, a Brooklyn native, was cautiously optimistic about what the new rivalry might mean. "Obviously, it's a great time for New York basketball," he said. "Unless the people running New York basketball screw it up."

rpillifant@observer.com

Matt Chaban contributed reporting.

Just a bit more profane. Last night, the real-life Morgan walked out of his courtside seat at the Knicks-Heat game at the Garden, and engaged in a nice chat with Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, live on TNT's "Inside the NBA." Like anyone with any reporting chops would do, Smith asked Tracy Morgan a question that was sure to elicit a ridiculous response.

"He's the only one who can settle it," Smith explained. "Tina Fey or Sarah Palin?"

Barkley intervened.

"Sarah Palin's good-looking, isn't she?" he said.

And then Tracy Morgan's response! Let's just say it was bad enough that TNT crawled out of bed to issue a response.

Do yourself a favor and watch below, because the content is too much for us to even write about.

(Kidding! Tracy said Palin is "good masturbation material." There. Got that out of our system.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdmYAYBgDIo

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Click for Scandal Report: Champagne Mania Makes for A Boozy Golden Globes

John F. Kennedy once said, "Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly".

One can only assume that last Thursday night when he announced, "I'm going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat," LeBron James was thinking that he didn't want to fail miserably in New York, on the world's brightest stage. This forgone, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is something that the self-proclaimed "King" may come to regret.

There is no doubt that New York can be an intimidating place, particularly for professional athletes. To succeed here, you need to be strong, you need the intestinal fortitude for the fight, the ability to live under a microscope and deal with the unrelenting pressure from the media and the suffocating expectations for success. Former Giants coach Bill Parcells used to say that in New York there is no in between. It is either euphoria or disaster-anything less than a championship is considered failure.

Many of our local sports heroes have been homegrown; some have come via trades; and others have willingly chosen to come to New York to provide themselves with the greatest challenges of their careers.

Knicks owner James Dolan hit the nail right on the head last week when he exclaimed, "It takes courage to play where the lights shine the brightest." Perhaps the challenge of carrying the Knicks franchise on his shoulders was too daunting for LeBron. Perhaps the challenge was too intimidating. Or perhaps LeBron would have wilted under the pressure of New York City. He certainly won't find anything near that level of pressure in Miami.

By coming to the Big Apple, LeBron had a chance to create a legacy far beyond basketball. He could have demonstrated his many talents in the World's Most Famous Arena. He could have interacted intimately with a city pulsing with not only a rich sports history, but with culture, politics and global significance.

Winning is great, but how you win is equally important. Something lost on LeBron was the fact that all rings are not the same. The way you win determines your legacy, as do the challenges you overcome. Moreover, there is nothing in the world like winning in New York.

IN NEW YORK, we have seen a host of champions, warriors and athletes who have had that killer instinct that is so necessary to excel here. We have also been witness to many who have tried and were unsuccessful because they couldn't live up to the challenge. 

My beloved New York Yankees clearly have the richest history of local sports superstars. They include Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Don Mattingly and present Yankees Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

Other local sports heroes include Giants Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor; Rangers Mike Richter and Brian Leach; Mets Tom Seaver and David Wright; and Knicks Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed.  

Others were great in other cities and decided to come to the Big Apple to test their mettle. Piazza was a star in Los Angeles and excelled in the New York spotlight. In his eight seasons with the Mets, he played 972 games, accumulated 1,028 hits, had a batting average of .296, and a slugging percentage of .542. In six of those years, he was named a National League All-Star.

This city has made legends out of other local sports heroes. Joe Namath famously led the Jets to a Super Bowl title in 1969, guaranteeing victory even though the Baltimore Colts were heavily favored.

When Mark Messier's contract with the Edmonton Oilers expired prior to the '91-'92 season, he chose to come to New York to do something that hadn't been done for decades: win the Stanley Cup in New York. Messier played just 10 of his 25 seasons in Broadway Blue and scored just 183 of his 694 career goals wearing a Ranger uniform. However, even though he won five cups in Edmonton, his leading the Rangers to the championship in 1994 has made Messier a legend in sports history.

And no list of New York's sports legends would be complete without Reggie Jackson. Reggie played only five of his 21 Major League seasons in pinstripes and hit only 144 of his 563 home runs as a Yankee. In those five seasons, Reggie reached the 100 RBI mark only twice and had a batting average of just .262. Yet, for his dramatic and clutch World Series performances, he was dubbed "Mr. October." No such moniker was bestowed upon him when he had even greater success years before in Oakland. The bigger the stage, the bigger the hero.

There have been several free agent signings that were deemed "busts" by the local media. In Pedro Martinez's years with the Mets, he earned $51.56 million and recorded just 32 victories-$1.6 million per win. This wasn't quite what the Mets had in mind when they brought the previous Cy Young Award winner to Flushing.

When the Yankees signed Randy Johnson, he earned approximately $32 million for two seasons and had a very respectable 17 wins in each of them. However, it was obvious from the beginning that Johnson was uncomfortable under the New York microscope.

Other free agent signings turned out far worse. The Yankees signed Carl Pavano in 2005 to a four-year contract. He pitched 100 innings in his first season, then, over the next three seasons, he threw just 45.2 innings. His $30 million contract broke down to $206,000 per inning pitched.

The Rangers signed Luc Robitaille after eight incredible seasons as an L.A. King. During these seasons, Robitaille averaged 50 goals and 100 points per season. In his two seasons at Madison Square Garden, he averaged just 23 goals and 55 points, leaving town with his tail between his legs.

Perhaps the most stunning free agent bust came in 1995, when the Yankees signed Chicago White Sox star pitcher Jack McDowell. Just two years earlier, in 1993, Mr. McDowell won the American League Cy Young Award and went 22-10. The expectations for McDowell were so high that every time he didn't pitch well, the boos grew. Toward the end of the year, as he was hooked after a poor performance, the taunts were so abrasive that he famously flipped the bird to the entire crowd at the stadium. Needless to say, he wasn't back for a second season in the Big Apple.

While some who came to New York became legends and some failed, some came merely to take a final bow on the world's brightest stage. These included Phil Esposito, who came to the Rangers in a trade with the Boston Bruins in the mid-1970s and led the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1979, a series the Rangers lost to the Montreal Canadians (that one still hurts!). Others include Montreal Canadian great Guy LaFleur and San Francisco 49er great Ronnie Lott.

Even the greatest hockey player in the world, Wayne Gretzky, decided to take a curtain call in New York. There are still more athletes who met the challenge of playing in the world's most challenging market. These include Alex Rodriguez, who easily could have left the Yankees when the going got tough but decided to stay and face intense scrutiny and criticism.

WINNING IN NEW York is unlike anything else imaginable. Championships these days are followed by parades down the famous Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan. In deference to my home state of New Jersey, a parade in a parking lot in the middle of the Meadowlands just doesn't quite cut it.

Some pundits have speculated that LeBron was afraid of the bright lights of New York and didn't want to be at the mercy of the intense scrutiny of the tabloids. Others say that he has lost confidence in himself and that his recent performance in Game 5 of the series against the Celtics showed signs of vulnerability. Others say that he simply wanted to be a big fish in a small pond.

Speculation on exactly what were the key variables in his decision-making process will go on. However, one thing many people are not talking about are the tax implications of his decision and how these may have impacted things.

In the NBA-unlike Major League Baseball, where the Yankees can throw as much money as they like at a player-there are salary caps and maximum contracts that create limitations on how much a team can spend on a particular player. With gross salary capped, players may increasingly look at after-tax income. In LeBron's new home state of Florida, there is no state income tax.

In New York, including state and local taxes, LeBron would have paid 12.85 percent on his income. In Miami, he signed a max contract for approximately $110 million over six years, or $18.35 million per season. The additional tax that he would have had to pay in order to be a Knick would be approximately $2.38 million per year (not taking into consideration the deductibility of state and local taxes from a federal tax obligation).

Additionally, professional athletes pay taxes to every state where they play away games. Therefore, this tax penalty would be mitigated somewhat by the amount of games played in the lower tax jurisdictions.

More importantly, the majority of LeBron's income comes in the form of endorsements, promotions and investments. This income is entirely taxed in the state of your residence. There are some estimates claiming this figure could be as high as $50 million annually over the course of his Miami contract. This $300 million package would be entirely taxable if he lived in New York, creating a tax obligation of nearly $40 million. You would think that his businesspeople pointed this fact out to him.

At some point, counting after-tax dollars when you are so wealthy may not sway lifestyle decisions, but there is always a straw that breaks the camel's back. This is why our legislators in New York should be cognizant of the fact that they may be driving athletes, businesses and other economic engines out of the city and the state because of the excessively high-and increasing-tax burdens faced by New Yorkers.

Tax policy should not be structured to make the Knicks a better team, but there is clearly a lesson to be learned here.

rknakal@masseyknakal.com

Robert Knakal is the chairman and founding partner of Massey Knakal Realty services and in his career has brokered the sale of more than 1,075 properties, having a market value in excess of $6.4 billion.