For the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, owned in part by the hip hopperati king, Jay-Z, it’s come down to this: a billionaire Russian playboy principal. To diehard sports fans, I suspect the new white Russian ownership will raise few brows, given the infusion of international athletes perched on NBA benches today, including the Houston Rockets’ Yao Ming, the great yellow hope.
According to the WSJ, Moscow-based Mikhail Prokhorow shelled out $265 million to snag majority ownership of the fledging east coast team. And although billed as the first foreign owner, Prokhorow isn’t exactly alone since Lebron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers sold a 15% stake last year to Chinese investors. So, what’s got me so riled?
More than Wall Street’s buckling, outsourcing has been the bane of the American economy with a slew of unrecoverable job losses. And don’t think for a minute that these governments of foreign stock aren’t netting handsome payoffs. In some instances, global is good but ‘H to the no’ when China is the keeper of American debt to the piercing tune of $755.4 billion: http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20100303/158082088.html. What, if anything, is American owned in China or Russia?
Like baseball, which is no longer as American as apple pie, the NBA seems headed in the wrong direction. Call me old school, however, the sports teams that we were once proud to call our own should continue to be reserved for American hands. I’m just not well with a foreigner making bank off of the backs of my African-American brothers though most suffer from an acute case of swirl syndrome.
Sorry, boo, but modern day slavery, despite its lofty financial benefits, is far from dead. Forget Arizona and let’s add Brooklyn, the city in which the Nets are expected to land, to the boycott list.
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