Coming off their second 34-48 season last year, the Nets were ranked near the bottom for both attendance and viewership and the Nets were desperate for attention. Entertainment mogul and part owner Jay-Z was no help, so the Nets looked to another source; attention glutton Vince McMahon. While there was no official meeting or even a statement of inspiration, the results speak for themselves. Before the season even started, the Nets had been promoting their 10 game match-up plan. Not only was this an absurd publicity stunt, but it also pissed off die-hard lifelong fans; a key aspect of McMahon’s business plan (see John Cena and Hornswoggle). Allow me to elaborate, the ten game match-up consists of ten games, in to getting 10 tickets you also got five reversible jerseys. Conventional wisdom might lead you to think that these jerseys would perhaps consist of a home side and an away side, or perhaps a modern day side and a retro side. Conventional wisdom would be wrong, rather these jerseys promoted on one side a current Net and on the reverse a star player of another team (such as Kobe or Lebron). What was the result of this promotion, well it was twofold; 1) outrage the fans who this as an admission that the Nets weren’t worth supporting 2) drawing more fans of the opposing teams than fans of the Nets. As an added twist of the knife, the Nets decided to put these same stars (i.e Kobe and Lebron) on the tickets. Shit on your loyal fans than question where fan support is? Yup sounds like a classic Vince move.


As their record breaking 18th season starting loss approached the Nets entered a dead panic. Rather than simply offer discounts, the Nets went all or nothing, issuing free tickets to almost every single home game. Yet this still wasn’t the most ridiculous of all their promotions. As if to mock their own lack of ability, the Nets also ran a contest in which the winner could call one play at a future game. Although the play did not result in a score, the player did manage to get the shot off unblocked; he just missed. To build off this the Nets decided they should instead allow fans to coach an entire game, the results of this has yet to be seen. In a last ditch effort to garner interest, the Nets take a page straight out of WWE circa 2007-2008. Just as McMahon faked his death in 2007, the Nets too are coming up with ridiculous rumors, 1) John Wall is lock to join the Nets (wrong: The NBA employs a draft lottery) 2) Duke’s Coach K is joining the Nets next season 3) Lebron is joining the Nets during free agency. To further the Lebron rumors, Dominos has announced that once Lebron joins the Nets they will have one lucky fan get a pizza delivered by the Nets, Nets dancers, and Sly. If that isn’t McMahon’s Million Dollar Giveaway (in which McMahon personally called the lucky winner) I don’t know what is. To top it all off, the Nets recently acquired their own eccentric billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.

It’s not only ridiculous promotions that the Nets borrowed from Vince either, but also actual performance. In the past few years, Vince has been known to push stars with limited wrestling ability such as the Great Khali, John Cena, Koslov, and Mark Henry, while firing young talented and entertaining athletes such as Brian Kendrick, Elijah Burke, and Charlie Haas. Similarly, the Nets continually put in garbage players such as YI Jianlian (worst defense in the league), while their bench mainly Kris Humphries dominates all aspects of the game.