Mike Lupica, November 2005: "If Caring Bruce Ratner is still the owner of the Nets in five years, I'll eat my hat."

New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica wrote 11/13/05:

If Caring Bruce Ratner is still the owner of the Nets in five years, I'll eat my hat.

A Nets hat, even.

He doesn't want the team.

He never really did.

He wants the land.

Dan Doctoroff thought he didn't have to buy people left and right to push his agenda with the West Side Stadium, he was Deputy Mayor.

Ratner was much smarter about all this, which is why he's got all these "community leaders" on scholarship now.

Lupica was right (though it doesn't look like he wrote a follow-up). The sale of a majority interest to Mikhail Prokhorov was announced in September 2009.