My thoughts on the meaning of the BK Nets? Don't forget the EB-5 story, as immigrant investors are misled into thinking they're supporting an arena

I was asked today to comment for a New York Observer article "about the post-Melo fight between the Nets and the Knicks for New York's psyche. Would you be interested in sharing your thoughts as to what this team does or does not mean for Brooklyn and the city as a whole?"

My response: "I think it means that Chinese millionaires think they're investing in an arena in exchange for green cards, via the developer's dubious deployment of the federal government's EB-5 program."

Don't put on blinders

Yeah, it sounds like a non sequitur, but the point is: when it comes to sports, I lean toward Dave Zirin, who can't forget how team owners wangle profits, not Will Leitch, who willfully puts on blinders.

And the New York Observer, however worthy its effort to cruise the borough basketball zeitgeist, should also have been reporting on what surely is misrepresentation and may be fraud.

It was former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky who famously said, "[T]here is nothing like professional sports to make public people nutty."

That applies to the press, as well.

Professional sports didn't make Brodsky nutty, by the way. But he did display some curious agnosticism toward Atlantic Yards, when it could be criticized for some of the same things Brodsky went after with the New York Yankees.