"At the end of the day," says another ex-Net after the superteam's demise, pro basketball is "a business."

From Several former Nets not surprised by breakup of Brooklyn superteam, by Brian Lewis in the 3/20/23 New York Post:

“I don’t know if I’m surprised,” Jeff Green told The Post. “But at the end of the day, we realize that it as [sic] a business. It was stuff that both sides couldn’t really control, and it ran its course.”

That echoes a quote, more than a month earlier, from one of the two superstars who pushed for trades, Kyrie Irving: “But it is a business at the end of the day, as we always say."

Indeed, the Brooklyn Nets are not a civic trust but, like other major league teams (except the NFL's Green Bay Packers), a "sports entertainment corporation," to quote subsidy skeptic Bettina Damiani.