In Sports Illustrated, the Brooklyn Nets on the cover; is it just Prokhorov who gained from "connections, shrewdness, no-bid purchasing"?

The cover story in this week's Sports Illustrated, with Nets guard Deron Williams in front of a art-directed 1970s-style graffiti wall that melds Dodgers and Nets, is "Brooklyn  Rising," by Rick Telander, author of the legendary 1976 book on Brooklyn street hoops, Heaven Is a Playground.

As noted in the Daily News, it's the first Nets cover since 2003, the Nets are the first NBA team this season to make the cover, and they're also "the subjects of NBA TV’s reality show, “The Association,” which will document their entire first season in Brooklyn."

“It’s been above and beyond what any of us expected,” General Manager Billy King told the Times of the publicity, “but it’s been great. It’s been a great launch.”

Telander spends more time reconnecting with the old street hoopsters of his/their youth, Albert King and Fly Williams, who took two very different paths, than analyzing the actual 2012 Nets, who, of course, haven't yet played together.

The cover animation



The history of Atlantic Yards

It's a sports magazine, so Telander provides an understandably potted history of Atlantic Yards:



And on and on. That's how he summarizes what I call the Culture of Cheating.

Enter Prokhorov, just like Ratner?

Telander writes:

Wait a sec: "connections, shrewdness, no-bid purchasing"? Isn't that exactly what Ratner deployed in Brooklyn? Sure.

In closing

Just like Brett Yormark, Telander's all in. For some, the Dodgers connection is the romantic one. Telander remembers Flatbush in 1974, and it warms his heart. Everybody brings the Brooklyn they know.