Joe Tsai is definitely stewing right now over the triumph of his crosstown rivals.
The Brooklyn Nets owner Tsai spoke this week in an interview with NetsDaily. During the interview, Tsai said that the New York Knicks’ 2026 NBA championship victory was “embarrassing” for the Nets.
“Every year, some team is going to win a championship,” said Tsai. “So it happens that this year that team is in the same city. It doesn’t make us feel very good. It irritates our fan base, and it is embarrassing.
“But in business or in competition, in sports, or in anything, you shouldn’t let the embarrassment factor affect how you perform,” Tsai added. “[We] had a plan, and we’re rebuilding, and I think right now we are on a positive trajectory. So it doesn’t change my thinking at all.”
The 62-year-old Tsai, co-founder and chairman of Chinese tech company Alibaba, purchased a majority stake in the Nets from their former owner Mikhail Prokhorov in 2019. Tsai also purchased the Nets’ arena, Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., via a separate deal that year.
But the bigger problem for Tsai right now is not so much what the Knicks are doing but more so what his own team is doing. The Nets saw their Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving-James Harden experiment go kaput with just one playoff series victory to show for it, and now Brooklyn has not made it to the playoffs or even had a single winning season since 2023.
Last year was the Nets’ worst season yet under Tsai as they went 20-62, finishing with the third-worst record in the NBA. While Brooklyn has made some interesting acquisitions so far this summer, the success of the rival Knicks (who had not previously win a title since 1973) is clearly not the biggest issue for them at the moment.
