Woj: I smell a Rat(ner)
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Friday, July 16, 2004

By ADRIAN WOJNAROWSKI
SPORTS COLUMNIST

Here's what you do this morning: Take the 2004-2005 season ticket application, rip it up, and make your last financial investment as a New Jersey Nets' fan: A postage stamp. Send the remains to Bruce Ratner at 1 MetroTech Center North in Brooklyn, and tell him this franchise officially belongs to him. Tell him that overnight, he's turned the Nets back into the biggest joke in the NBA.

Most of all, tell him that you've lived it too long, and you refuse to do it again. Tell him to take his team, and get out of your life forever.

Abandon the owner, the way he's decided to abandon these final seasons in the state of New Jersey. What's the use giving your money - never mind your heart - to a franchise that has stopped trying. Stopped competing. The Nets traded the best young power forward in the NBA on Thursday, for nothing.

Three first-round draft picks. How humiliating. In this day and age, three draft picks for Kenyon Martin? How insulting. Draft picks are the last resort for old teams needing to get young again, contenders on the decline needing to start over. Draft picks are for choosing cheap, raw teenagers who maybe someday will turn into something. Three draft picks for Martin, and maybe, if they're lucky in several years, the next Nets' executive will draft a player who developed like Martin did for Rod Thorn.

Once more, the Nets are a disgrace. That didn't take long, did it? Ratner is the worst of the worst in sports, an owner treating his team like another real estate purchase, buying it up, stripping it down, and spending the rest of his time and money on a sweetheart deal in Brooklyn. Death threats were pouring into the Nets' facility for him on Thursday, and of course, that's despicable.

There's a worse punishment, anyway: Make Ratner sit in the stands the next few years and watch what's left of the two-time Eastern Conference champion Nets. Wait until Jason Kidd is gone, and Kerry Kittles is traded for cheaper players to fill up the bench roster, and Richard Jefferson has promised to never re-sign with Ratner.

It was all a hustle. Just one big hustle.

Of course, these are the Nets. And it could've been worse.

They could've been sold to Charles Kushner.

And as it turned out, his indictments allege, Kushner went shopping for a deal in New York, too.

Rip up the season tickets, and let Ratner sit silently in the Meadowlands until he's moved them away to Brooklyn. The Nets are done competing. They're done trying. This wasn't the end with Martin, but the beginning. Almost everything of value in this franchise will soon be flushed out.

In the stampede for the door, there's just one pressing question: Does Thorn do Kidd a favor, trade him where he wants to go, and then resign? Or just leave that job to someone else. If they let Martin go, Kidd has promised associates that he would be the next out the door. Kidd just hopes that Thorn stays on the job long enough to make it happen for him.

Make no mistake: Kidd will never stay here. And if he does, he'll kick and scream until Ratner has no choice.

At best, the Nets will be a .500 team in the East without Martin. The arena will be empty. For Ratner's priorities, Kidd is useless. He'll be too old to still be a superstar if and when the Nets finally move to Brooklyn. Now, Ratner can trade him for a package of cheap young players and veterans at the end of more expensive contracts. Thorn is close to Kidd, and he'll feel an obligation to airlift him out of this mess. He talked him into staying, and he feels lousy about it.

Around the NBA, this has been the summer of teams that are going for it. With the breakup of the Lakers, so many more teams believed that they had a chance to compete for a championship. As everyone else in the Eastern Conference has worked to make themselves stronger, as Shaq went to Miami and Rasheed Wallace stayed in Detroit, the Nets had a chance to keep Martin and welcome a promising young European star, Nenad Krstic, who would've made a difference on the frontline with Martin.

The Nets sold the No. 1 pick for cash, freeing them of a three-year obligation to a pick's contract. Rodney Rogers walked out on his $3 million-plus contract, and Ratner still refused to match the prospective Denver offer sheet. They could've competed to get back to the Finals again, but they're going to fight to stay out of the lottery.

Worst of all, Ratner could care less. Winning is irrelevant to him. All these owners want to make money. They have the right. Nobody begrudges them that. Yet, Ratner doesn't know basketball and he doesn't know sports and he sure doesn't know the investment fans need to root for his team. When e-mailed on Thursday, and asked if it worried him that an owner was buying into basketball with no knowledge of the game, no love for it, no real competitive drive for winning, Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban responded: "No. Once they get in, it's real tough not to drink the Kool-Aid and get hooked."

When Cuban bought the Mavericks, nothing needed to get him "hooked." He was a devoted Mavericks' fan. He loved basketball. Cuban wanted a winner in the worst way. What's more, Cuban understood that he had to spend money to make money. An owner has to be a businessman, but somewhere in there, there has to be some fan too. As much as anything, he has to understand that there are minimal expectations for maintaining a team's credibility. With these Nets, that's crumbled.

The Nets are forever making history, and they've done it again. Before the new owner had even officially been approved by the Board of Governors, he had turned himself into the biggest joke in the NBA. Bruce Ratner let the best young power forward in basketball walk out the door without a living, breathing player brought back to replace him. He let Martin walk with an understanding that it guaranteed that the game's best point guard would want out, too.

Bruce Ratner made his decision on Thursday. He decided to take your basketball team, gut it, and leave these last few seasons in Jersey to reflect on that brief, brilliant window when the Nets mattered again, when the biggest joke in sports had come to care about competing, and winning, and had the basketball minds and talent to get it done.

Yes, Ratner made his choice. Sure, Nets' fans could tell the owner to go to hell, but they wouldn't wish that on anyone.

They've been there.

E-mail: wojnarowski@northjersey.com