Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: Who was the first owner of the Brooklyn Nets?
The Brooklyn Nets are an American professional basketball team based in Brooklyn, New York. They are a member of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The team plays its home games at the Barclays Center. The franchise was founded as the New Jersey Americans in 1967, and was one of the eleven original American Basketball Association (ABA) teams. In its second ABA season, Arthur Brown, the team owner, moved the team to Long Island and renamed it the New York Nets. The team won ABA championships in 1974 and 1976. When the ABA merged with the NBA in 1976, the Nets were one of four ABA teams admitted into the NBA. The team was moved to the Rutgers Athletic Center in New Jersey; after the 1976–77 NBA season, the team was renamed the New Jersey Nets. Since they joined the NBA, the Nets have won 4 divisional championships, 2 conference championships and appeared in the playoffs 16 times. The Nets moved to Brooklyn in 2012, and now play as the Brooklyn Nets.
The Milwaukee Bucks are an American professional basketball team based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Bucks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member club of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The team was founded in 1968 as an expansion team, and play at the Fiserv Forum. Former U.S. Senator Herb Kohl was the long-time owner of the team, but on April 16, 2014, a group led by billionaire hedge fund managers Wes Edens and Marc Lasry agreed to purchase a majority interest in the team from Kohl, a sale which was approved by the owners of the NBA and its Board of Governors one month later on May 16. The team is managed by Jon Horst, the team's former Director of Basketball Operations, who took over for John Hammond in May 2017.
The Milwaukee Bucks were formed and owned by a group of investors headed by Wesley Pavalon and Marvin Fishman, which called the Milwaukee Professional Sports and Services, Inc. (Milwaukee Pro). The Bucks were the second NBA team from Milwaukee, after the Milwaukee Hawks, which moved to St. Louis in 1955 and then Atlanta in 1968, becoming the Atlanta Hawks. The Bucks' selections included former first overall pick Fred Hetzel, six-time All-Star Larry Costello, five-time All-Star Wayne Embry, four-time All-Star Guy Rodgers and one-time All-Star Len Chappell. Prior to the expansion draft, Costello retired from playing due to injury and was named as the franchise's first head coach. Ten players from the expansion draft joined the Bucks for their inaugural season, but only three played more than one season for the team. Jon McGlocklin, who played eight seasons with the Bucks, was named to the 1969 All-Star Game, becoming the franchise's first All-Star. He was the only player from the expansion draft that was on the Bucks team that won the NBA championship in . Embry was later inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor.
Wilton Norman Chamberlain (; August 21, 1936 – October 12, 1999) was an American basketball player who played center position and is considered one of the most prominent and dominant players in NBA history. He played for the Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played for the University of Kansas and also for the Harlem Globetrotters before playing in the NBA. Chamberlain stood tall, and weighed as a rookie before bulking up to 275 and eventually to over with the Lakers.
Sports promoter Harry Glickman sought a National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise for Portland as far back as 1955 when he proposed two new expansion teams, the other to be located in Los Angeles. When the Memorial Coliseum was opened in 1960 Glickman saw the potential it could serve as a professional basketball venue but it was not until February 6, 1970, that the NBA board of governors granted him the rights to a franchise in Portland. To raise the money for the $3.7 million admission tax, Glickman associated himself to real estate magnates Robert Schmertz of New Jersey, Larry Weinberg of Los Angeles and Herman Sarkowsky of Seattle. Two weeks later, on February 24, team management held a contest to select the team's name and received more than 10,000 entries. The most popular choice was "Pioneers", but that name was excluded from consideration as it was already used by sports teams at Portland's Lewis & Clark College. The name "Trail Blazers" received 172 entries, and was ultimately selected by the judging panel, being revealed on March 13 in the halftime of a SuperSonics game at the Memorial Coliseum. Derived from the trail blazing activity by explorers making paths through forests, Glickman considered it a name that could "reflect both the ruggedness of the Pacific Northwest and the start of a major league era in our state." Despite initial mixed response, the Trail Blazers name, often shortened to just "Blazers", became popular in Oregon.
Hosts
The Dodgers found themselves victims of their own success soon thereafter. Ebbets Field never seated more than 35,000 people (the smallest park in the National League by seating capacity), and the constraints of the neighborhood made its expansion impossible. It had almost no automobile parking for Dodger fans who had moved east to suburban Long Island, though it was near a subway station. Walter O'Malley, who obtained majority ownership of the Dodgers in 1950, announced plans for a privately-owned domed stadium at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn (currently the site of Barclays Center), where a large market was being torn down. However, New York City Building Commissioner Robert Moses refused to help O'Malley secure the land, instead wanting the Dodgers to move to a city-owned stadium in Flushing Meadows in the borough of Queens (the future site of Shea Stadium and Citi Field). O'Malley refused to consider Moses' proposal, famously saying, "We are the Brooklyn Dodgers, not the Queens Dodgers!" As a result, O'Malley began to flirt publicly with Los Angeles, using a relocation threat as political leverage to win favor for a Brooklyn stadium. Ultimately, O'Malley and Moses could not come to agreement on a new location for the stadium, and the club moved west to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. During their last two years in Brooklyn, the Dodgers played several games each year in Jersey City, New Jersey's Roosevelt Stadium, a tactic by O'Malley to force a new stadium to be built.
In 1946, Italian immigrant Daniel Biasone sent a $5,000 check to the National Basketball League offices in Chicago, and the Syracuse Nationals became the largely Midwest-based league's easternmost team, based in the Upstate New York city of Syracuse. The Syracuse Nationals began play in the NBL in the same year professional basketball was finally gaining some legitimacy with the rival Basketball Association of America that was based in large cities like New York and Philadelphia. While in the NBL with teams largely consisting of small Midwestern towns, the Nationals put together a 21–23 record, finishing in fourth place. In the playoffs, the Nationals would be beaten by the fellow upstate neighbor Rochester Royals in four games.
In their second season, 1947–48, the Nationals would struggle, finishing in fifth place with a 24–36 record. Despite their struggles, the Nationals would make the playoffs, getting swept by the Anderson Duffey Packers in 3 straight games.
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On January 22, 1968, the ABA awarded a franchise to Milwaukee Professional Sports and Services, Inc. (Milwaukee Pro), a group headed by Wesley Pavalon and Marvin Fishman. A fan contest was held to name the new team, with over 40,000 fans participating. While the most-voted fan entry was the "Robins", named for Wisconsin's state bird, the contest judges went with the second-most popular choice, the "Bucks", which was a reference to Wisconsin's official wild animal, the white-tailed deer. One fan, R. D. Trebilcox, was awarded a new car for his part in reasoning why the Bucks was a good nickname, saying that bucks were "spirited, good jumpers, fast and agile." The Bucks marked a return of the NBA to Milwaukee after 13 years; their previous team, the Hawks, played for four seasons in the early 1950s before moving to St. Louis in 1955 (they are now based in Atlanta). In October, the Bucks played their first NBA regular-season game against the Chicago Bulls before a Milwaukee Arena crowd of 8,467. As is typical with expansion teams, the Bucks' first season (1968–69) was a struggle. Their first victory came in their sixth game as the Bucks beat the Detroit Pistons 134–118; they won only 26 more games in their first year. The Bucks' record that year earned them a coin flip against their expansion cousins, the Phoenix Suns, to see who would get the first pick in the upcoming draft. It was considered a foregone conclusion that the first pick in the draft would be Lew Alcindor of UCLA. The Bucks won the coin flip, but had to win a bidding war with the upstart American Basketball Association (ABA) to secure him.
The 1954 merger of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motor Car Company, and the creation of American Motors, was led by George W. Mason to reap benefits from the strengths of the two firms to battle the much larger "Big Three" automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler).
Susan O'Malley (born November 7, 1961) is an American sports executive. In 1991, she became president of the Washington Bullets team, a member of the National Basketball Association (NBA); then 29 years old, she was the first female president of an NBA franchise, and one of the first women to hold the top front-office position for a major league sports team in North America.
Susan O'Malley grew up in a Catholic family in Clinton, Maryland (in Prince George's County), one of five children of Janice Karol and Peter O'Malley. Her father was an influential Maryland attorney who also served as president of the National Hockey League team, the Washington Capitals, when Susan was a child. The middle child of the five siblings, she expressed an early interest in sports, writing an elementary school essay on her desire to run a professional sports team, which a teacher told her was "unrealistic".
The history of the New England Patriots began when Boston business executive William "Billy" Sullivan and Sullivan Brother Printers, owned by Joseph Sullivan, were awarded the eighth and final franchise of the developing American Football League (AFL) on November 16, 1959. The following winter, locals submitted thousands of ideas for the Boston football team's official name. On February 20, 1960, Sullivan chose "Boston Patriots", with "Patriots" referring to those colonists of the Thirteen Colonies who rebelled against British control during the American Revolution and in July 1776 declared the United States of America an independent nation. "Patriots" as a nickname had been suggested by 74 fans, among them Larry Kepnes. Immediately thereafter, artist Phil Bissell developed the "Pat Patriot" logo.
In the 2009 NBA draft, the Milwaukee Bucks selected point guard Brandon Jennings, who had not gone to college but played in Italy the previous year. Midway through the season, Bucks GM John Hammond traded Hakim Warrick to Chicago, and acquired John Salmons. In a Bucks uniform, Salmons averaged a team-leading 19.9 points per game. The play of Jennings, along with the improvement of Andrew Bogut, the improved Ersan İlyasova, and the Salmons trade, catapulted the team to be a playoff contender. At the beginning of the season, the Bucks had low playoffs expectations; they had not been in four years. In October, the Bucks quickly fell behind the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Central Division, but Milwaukee ultimately clinched a playoff berth on April 6, 2010, with a road win over the Chicago Bulls. It was during that time that the phrase ""Fear the Deer"" started, most likely by an ESPN commentator, and adopted on message boards and within Andrew Bogut's Squad 6. The slogan rang well with Bucks fans, who started bringing signs with the phrase to games. The slogan became the team's battle cry in the NBA playoffs. The Bucks finished the regular season with a record of 46–36. The Bucks clinched the sixth seed and were eliminated in a seven-game series against the Atlanta Hawks. It was the farthest Milwaukee had gotten in the post-season since 2001. The Bucks short playoff run was also in part due to Bogut suffering a broken arm after making an awkward fall after a dunk in a late-season game, thus ending his season. In the 2010–11 season, the Bucks finished ninth in the Eastern Conference, just out of reach of the playoffs.
Capitol Sports Promotions, with Carlos Colón, Victor Jovica and Gorilla Monsoon as promoters/co-owners of the organization, was a member of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) until late 1988, when Gorilla Monsoon left. The company then went bankrupt (as confirmed by Victor Quiñones in an interview with prwrestling.com). Following this, Thomas Collado became the owner in 1976, before Carlos Colon and Victor Jovica.
The Nash-Kelvinator/Hudson deal was a straight stock transfer (three shares of Hudson listed at 11⅛, for two shares of AMC and one share of Nash-Kelvinator listed at 17⅜, for one share of AMC) and finalized in the spring of 1954, forming the fourth-biggest auto company in the U.S. with assets of US$355 million and more than $100 million in working capital. The new company retained Hudson CEO A.E. Barit as a consultant and he took a seat on the Board of Directors. Nash's George W. Mason became President and CEO.
Mason, the architect of the merger, believed that the survival of the US' remaining independent automakers was dependent on their joining in one multibrand company capable of challenging the "Big Three"—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—as an equal. The "frantic 1953–54 Ford/GM price war" had a devastating impact on the remaining "independent" automakers. The reasons for the merger between Nash and Hudson included helping cut costs and strengthen their sales organizations to meet the intense competition expected from autos' Big Three.
In 2009, Mayor Bloomberg announced Wierson was stepping down as President of NYC Media Group, saying "Over the past seven years, Arick Wierson and his team transformed NYC TV into one of the nation's best television stations. After helping build the station virtually from scratch, Arick oversaw the merger of NYC TV with WNYE-TV and WNYE-FM, creating the largest local media group in New York that now reaches hundreds of thousands of people every day. NYC TV's 160 New York Emmy nominations and 42 awards serve as a testament to Arick's vision, tenacity, and leadership and to the excellence of the media group he was instrumental in creating. I have no doubt that Arick's entrepreneurial and creative talents, which helped him achieve great things at NYC TV will serve him well as he rejoins the private sector..."
The Portland Trail Blazers are an American professional basketball team based in Portland, Oregon. The Trail Blazers play in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The franchise entered the NBA in 1970. The Trail Blazers sold out 814 consecutive home games from through , the longest such streak in American professional sports. The team has played their home games at the Moda Center (formerly the Rose Garden) since the 1995–96 NBA season. The Trail Blazers are owned by Paul Allen, and Neil Olshey is their general manager.
Another of Bloomberg's technology initiatives was the creation of NYC Media. By virtue of the franchise agreements with the cable TV operators, New York City had always had access to valuable spectrum on local cable providers Cablevision and Time Warner Cable, but had made little use of the channels. Upon taking office in 2002, Bloomberg tapped two trusted campaign aides, Seth Unger and Arick Wierson, to revamp the City's cable channels. In 2003, Bloomberg unveiled their creation, a network called NYC TV. Unlike typical Government-access television (GATV) run local channels, NYC TV would be focused on local lifestyle and events, parks, history and culture. Some members of the New York City Council initially criticized the network for being overly preoccupied with ratings. Nonetheless, the network gained early traction, most notably for its coverage of the local fashion industry and local arts and music scene. Since its inception, NYC TV has gone on to absorb local broadcaster WNYE-TV and has emerged as the largest local broadcast network in the New York region with one full power broadcast station, four cable stations, and one FM Radio station, collectively now known as NYC Media. By many regards, Bloomberg's belief that NYC TV could reinvent the local television landscape largely held true. In 2006, WNBC entered into a large syndication agreement to air over 100 hours of NYC TV's original shows. The network has won numerous New York Emmys since its inception, and series such as "Secrets of New York" are being distributed nationally on PBS, DiSH Network, airlines and overseas. In the Spring of 2009, the Mayor announced that NYC Media President Arick Wierson was returning to the private sector, and that Katherine Oliver, the current Film Commissioner and another longtime friend and colleague of the Mayor, would be stepping into Wierson's former role as the top executive at the NYC TV stations.
The Redskins made Gilbert their franchise player, but rather than sign the one-year $3.4 million tender offer, Gilbert sat out the 1997 season. After the 1997 season the Redskins again made Gilbert a franchise player, this time offering a one-year contract for $2.97 million (the average of the 5 highest paid DTs). Gilbert objected and asked for arbitration saying the Redskins did not have the right to place their franchise player tag on him for a second straight year. On March 17, 1998, the NFLPA and the NFL had an all-day hearing to resolve the case.
Group C
After the dismissal of major pending lawsuits, groundbreaking for Barclays Center occurred on March 11, 2010.
On September 26, 2011, Jay-Z, the Nets' minority owner, announced that the team's new name after the move to Brooklyn would be the Brooklyn Nets. The team officially became the Brooklyn Nets on April 30, 2012. The team's new colors were announced to be black and white, and two official logos designed by Timothy Morris were unveiled. The primary logo is a shield depicting the team name 'Nets', along with a basketball with an overlaid "B". The secondary logo is the same "B-ball" surrounded by a black circle with the text "Brooklyn" and "New York". The new logo's typeface and colors are meant to evoke New York City Subway rollsigns from the 1950s when Brooklyn last had a major league sports team. This rebranding of the team led to a dramatic increase in merchandise sales for the team. On the first two days that the new merchandise was available, total sales from the NBA Store were 10 times that of a typical year when the team was in New Jersey, and in the initial months of the 2012–13 season, the Nets led all NBA teams in apparel sales.
Ratner first became owner of the Nets when he headed an ownership group that purchased the franchise from YankeeNets for $300 million. Ratner's group beat out an ownership group led by Charles Kushner and former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine. Ratner relocated the Nets to New York City, specifically to build an arena in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn even though there was desire to keep them in New Jersey and strong neighborhood protests to keep them out of Brooklyn.
Riding a strong second half of the season from Deron Williams, the Nets clinched their first playoff berth since the 2006–07 season on March 21, 2013. On April 3, 2013, Brooklyn ended an eight-game road trip by beating the Cleveland Cavaliers 113–95 for the team's 21st road win, clinching the first winning season on the road in the franchise's NBA history. Brooklyn played its first ever playoff series in the borough versus the Chicago Bulls. After defeating the undermanned Bulls in a blowout in Game 1, the Nets then proceeded to lose Games 2 and 3 before giving up a 17-point lead in the final minutes of the fourth quarter in Game 4 and losing in overtime. The Nets won the next two games, only to lose Game 7 in Brooklyn. With the season over, the Nets announced that Carlesimo would not return as head coach.
On September 24, 2009, Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia's third-richest man according to "Forbes", confirmed his intention to become majority owner of the Nets. Prokhorov sent an offer to the team owners requesting that the control shareholding of the basketball club be sold to his company, Onexim, for a symbolic price. In return, Prokhorov funded a loan for the construction of a $700 million arena in Brooklyn which was later named the Barclays Center, and attracted additional funds from Western banks. Prokhorov stated that he initiated the deal to help push Russian basketball to a new level of development. On May 11, 2010, following approval from the other owners of the NBA, Prokhorov had become a principal owner of the Nets.