New Jersey Nets 1-0 in court, 0-17 on the court

The Nets have tied an NBA record for the worst start to a season, dropping their first SEVENTEEN games (imagine the '07 New England Patriots, if they had won Super Bowl XLII, in reverse). Coach Lawrence Frank has been fired. (Really, it took that long?). They're scoring a league-worst 85.7 points per game, only slightly better than what Drew Brees and the Saints can do these days against the right opponent.

Expect them to lose at home to the Mavericks Wednesday and to the Bobcats Friday to drop to an historic 0-19 before getting a chance at glory at Madison Square Garden Sunday at noon in the NBA Misery Bowl against the Knicks (currently 3-14).

Despite the team's struggles, someone with a lot of money (in 2009, that could be no one else but a Russian billionaire like Mikhail Prokhorov) is interested in buying low. In an extremely challenging and complex real-estate deal, developer Bruce Ratner will construct the futuristic palace pictured below in Brooklyn (after scrapping an even crazier-looking but more expensive Frank Gehry design) and have Prokhorov rescue the team from the New Jersey swamp and have them play there instead.

Awkwardly, people currently live here. But not to worry: eminent domain to the rescue! In a 60-page opinion released last week (full text here), Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman of the New York Court of Appeals wrote, "It is indisputable that the removal of urban blight is a proper, and, indeed, constitutionally sanctioned, predicate for the exercise of the power of eminent domain."

I suppose it's up to Ratner and Prokhorov to prove that the Nets wouldn't be any worse a blight than the vacant rail yards that are there now.