Malcolm Gladwell, in Grantland, gets the Atlantic Yards big picture: "a man buys a basketball team as insurance on a real estate project"
Well, New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica was right all along, writing 11/13/05: If Caring Bruce Ratner is still the owner of the Nets in five years, I'll eat my hat. ...He doesn't want the team. He never really did. He wants the land. After the March 2010 groundbreaking, Lupica commented , "It was a hustle in broad daylight by Caring Bruce Ratner from the start." Enter Gladwell That same sentiment comes from New Yorker writer and Grantland contributing editor Malcolm Gladwell, in a 9/26/11 essay in the latter headlined The Nets and NBA Economics: David Stern would have you believe the Brooklyn-bound franchise embodies everything wrong with the league's finances. It's not true. His conclusion: The rich have gone from being grateful for what they have to pushing for everything they can get. They have mastered the arts of whining and predation, without regard to logic or shame. In the end, this is the lesson of the NBA lockout. A man...