OKC’s Thunder will play the sinking Brooklyn Nets at 6:30pm CST this evening as Winter Storm Jonas has caused the start time to be moved back. So we’ll start there.
OKC comes into tonight as one of the hotter teams in the league and winners of twenty-one of their last twenty-five games. With Kevin Durant in the lineup, OKC is 30-8. Against the three teams perceived to be above OKC as championship worthy OKC is…. 1-0 vs. San Antonio, 0-1 vs. Cleveland, and 0-0 vs. Golden State.
It’s a much different story for perhaps the most depressing team in the league with the Brooklyn Nets. Quite simply, this franchise is a mess under the ownership of Russian business visionary Mikhail Prokhorov. The team is 11-33 and very much on the cusp of joining the Lakers and Sixers in pursuit of being an even bigger dumpster fire this season.
At least with the Lakers, there’s the hope once Kobe Bryant’s salary is dumped—the franchise can get it’s act together landing a couple of free agents and become respectable again. With the Sixers, there’s hope as well with at least some young pieces and a slew of draft picks in hand.
But with the Nets…the future is dim. The team’s future was traded away with the acquisitions of Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to win immediately, but neither of those vets are still around as Prokhorov’s bid to win big then backfired and the Nets in my view are the joke of the league as far as mismanagement.
Head coach Lionell Hollins was fired on Jan. 10th while GM Billy King was reassigned duties. Since then—the Nets are 1-6 and 1-10 in their last eleven games. Interim head coaching duties have been assigned to Tony Brown.
Add this to the mix, per Forbes Magazine’s recent business evaluation of the thirty NBA teams-the Nets were the only team in the league to not make a profit. As far as franchise valuation the Nets ranked seventh with an estimated value of $1.7 billion, but with operating revenues of $220 million showed a net loss of $5.7 million last year. Hard to do in this current NBA financial landscape, but the man who sees himself as the conduit between old Russia and a Russia becoming a model of Western free market entrepreneurship has this on his current NBA ownership resume.
Per Forbes continued just for information sake–the current Forbes evaluations estimate the average worth of an NBA franchise to be $1.25 billion dollars. The NY Knicks head the list with an estimated value of $ 3 billion dollars.
OKC’s Thunder ranks 17th on the list with a value of $950 million. OKC showed a net profit of $20.9 million on $157 million of operating revenue. OKC’s franchise value as whole had an increase of 16%.
OKC comes in tonight on a seven game winning streak, but will be without Steven Adams for the second straight game due to an elbow injury. I would expect Nick Collison to once again get the start.
I’d expect Brooklyn to start Brook Lopez, Thaddeus Young, Joe Johnson, Wayne Ellington and Donald Sloan tonight.
Haven’t even bothered to check the Vegas spread. But his one could be trickier than expected with this game falling in between road games against the Mavs and Knicks. OKC and Brooklyn met back in OKC on Nov. 25th with the Thunder winning 110-99. I’ll go OKC to win at -12.
Go Patriots, Go Panthers! Brady versus Newton would make for an intriguing Super Bowl.