If you happened to type in “Nets.com” into your address bar and expected to be taken to the website for the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, you’d be disappointed with your results.
The landing page for Nets.com seems to be boasting that they own the site rather than the NBA team or league (most team nicknames such as “Lakers.com” forwards to the team’s page on NBA.com). Visitors are greeted with the following message:
Looking for the New Jersey Nets?
Looking for the Brooklyn Nets?
They’re not here…but they SHOULD be!
After all, there’s just one team:
The Nets!
On the bottom left of the page, there is an image of Mark Cuban sticking out his tongue. There is a Russian message to the right of the picture which (according to Google Translate) says, “Michael, have you noticed? Vilena wondered…”
Jose Martinez at Complex Sports says Vilena is the name of a prostitute who was part of the scandal involving Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, which was eventually dropped. Martinez believes Cuban, who has a longstanding feud with Prokhorov, is involved with the website.
We did a search and discovered that Cyber Mesa Computer Systems has owned the site since 1994 and owns it through 2014. Unless Cuban got to them and asked them to put up those messages, this taunting was done independent of him.
I have to say, this was a pretty pathetic taunt job. The site is pretty crude looking. Overall, it has nothing on one of the best cyber tricks we wrote about this year.
