Homer News: New Jersey Nets (6-53)

New Jersey Nets aren’t focused on getting LeBron James’ attention, they just want to get wins
LeBron James and the Cavaliers come to East Rutherford tonight for the last time this season, but the Nets do not see this as a last chance to impress the impending free agent.

Devin Harris said the team cannot think beyond tonight.”We’re just trying to get a win,” Harris said. “We play them pretty well. We come out and play hard.”

The Nets (6-53) are struggling to find four more victories in their last 23 games to avoid the infamy of breaking the mark for fewest wins in a season, which is nine by the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers.

If putting up a fight is appealing to James, then the Nets have done a better job than the Knicks. The Nets’ worst loss to the Cavaliers this season was by 10 points, while the Knicks took a 31-point beating in Cleveland Monday night.

Tonight, however, the Nets will face a different challenge against the Cavaliers, with center Shaquille O’Neal out for six to eight weeks after thumb surgery.
NY Daily News

Nets Will Now Do Your Taxes
The latest move in the Nets never-ending marketing ploys to get somebody, anybody, to show up at the Izod Center (per the New York Times):

Their latest promotion will be unveiled Friday, when the Nets play the Orlando Magic. New Jersey residents 18 or older who attend the game will get a coupon that they can redeem at a Roni Deutch Tax Center to get their state income tax done free.

So unlike reversible jerseys with other players names on them, or promising a player’s services for an hour, or $10 tickets during a 10-game losing streak, this promotion has absolutely nothing to do with the Nets, or basketball for that matter, which makes it even more ridiculous.
Nets Are Scorching

NJ Nets’ Chris Douglas-Roberts trying to get back into groove of starting
Chris Douglas-Roberts was a starter for the Nets for the first three months of the season, until coach Kiki Vandeweghe decided, at the beginning of February, to replace him with the veteran Jarvis Hayes.

But with Courtney Lee out of action because of a sprained ankle and Hayes still bothered by a calf strain that caused him to miss two games, Vandeweghe put Douglas-Roberts back in the starting five for Sunday’s game against Washington. And how did that feel to Douglas-Roberts? “It felt weird,’’ he said at Tuesday’s practice.
Weird?
The Star-Ledger

Russian billionaire loses £36m deposit he put down on the world’s most expensive home… plus another £1m interest
A Russian billionaire has lost a £36 million deposit he paid to buy the most expensive house in the world on the French riviera, plus another £1million interest.

Mikhail Prokhorov – the world’s 24th richest man – offered £360 million for the sprawling Villa Leopolda in 2008. After making a ten per cent down-payment, he then backed out of the sale after the global credit crunch hit.

But under French property law, once an initial sale contract has been signed, a deposit can only be refunded during a seven day ‘cooling-off’ period. A court in Nice ruled yesterday that the villa’s owner, 71-year-old Lily Safra, could keep the £36 million pounds.
Daily News