LeBron coming to the Nets?

New York Knicks president of basketball operations Donnie Walsh has reportedly been plotting for some time on how he can convince LeBron James(notes) to leave the comforts of the Cleveland Cavaliers to come and play for his embattled squad. Just imagine how unhappy Walsh would be if James ended up leaving Cleveland to go play for the New Jersey Nets.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov is very close to taking majority ownership of the Nets from Bruce Ratner and folks are thinking he's going to turn around the team's poor financial situation (it lost $25 million in the first six months of this year, according to the New York Post) and fix any battle it's having with the residents of Brooklyn, who are doing anything they can to keep the team from building an arena in the borough's already-busy downtown.

Prokhorov's rubles could change everything, especially how the Nets approach the big-name free agents of next summer: LeBron James, Chris Bosh(notes), Dwyane Wade(notes), and Amar'e Stoudemire(notes).

There's even a rumor that the basketball-loving Russian could bring back the wacky and cool design that famed architect Frank Gehry had for the proposed new arena (that might never get built) rather than the eventual ultra-blah airplane-hangar-like building that Ratner ended up with due to lack of dough to throw around. That is no longer a problem for the Nets.

Source: New York Post

By Mark Miller