JON SPOELSTRA, FORMER NETS PRESIDENT: We had no redeemable history. We had never won anything, and our name -- it was like calling the Yankees the "New York Second Bases." The team never had a chance with that name.
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SPOELSTRA: My first idea was to change the name so New Jersey wasn't even in it. We played in East Rutherford. It was a small town, with a tax base of something like $10 million. We went to officials there and said, "We want to change your name, here's a couple million bucks for the rights." And we could turn around and sell the naming rights to Nike, and become the Nike Nets.
It just ended up being too much government.
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STERN: I decided not to stop it. I was confident the [Nets] owners would shut it down. They weren't a particularly daring group. And you know, the Meadowlands was an environmentally elite site, with wonderful wildlife. It was protected. It was a swamp. Swamp, to me, is not really a bad word.
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O'GRADY: We spent four or five months on this, and suddenly there was a pushback. We were getting hammered. Hammered. We played around with maybe just calling them Fire Dragons -- to save the dragon, but veer away from the swamp.
SPOELSTRA: Fire Dragons didn't come from us. We wanted Swamp Dragons. The funny thing is, that swamp caught fire every summer anyway. The water would literally burn because of all the chemicals in it. Talk about fire dragons.
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The Board of Governors voted by fax, 26-1, to approve the name change.
SPOELSTRA: David [Stern] called me screaming, "What the f--- is going on?" I asked what he was screaming about. He told me the vote came in, 26-1, in our favor. Well, that's terrific. What's the problem? He told me: "No, that isn't terrific, because the one dissenting team was you -- the Nets."
We voted against our own name change. I thought he was kidding. If your own team votes no, you can't go ahead with something like this.
