Pacific Park, Brooklyn
The Barclays Center is the new home arena of the National Basketball Association's Brooklyn Nets, and the NHL's New York Islanders which was purchased by a group led by principal developer Bruce Ratner with the intention of making it and the arena the centerpiece of the whole project. This brought major league professional sports to Brooklyn for the first time since the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, California after the 1957 season. The arena’s design once included an ice skating rink and a green roof. An NBA basketball team now owned primarily by Russia's second richest man Mikhail Prokhorov, the Nets began playing at the Barclays Center arena in 2012. Formerly the New Jersey Nets, the Nets re-branded themselves when they moved to the Barclays Center. Prokhorov is an avid basketball fan, and, with 80 percent ownership in the Nets, he has become the first Russian owner of a major U.S. professional sports franchise. The deal was necessary for Ratner, who was risking losing tax-exempt financing and the Barclays naming-rights deal if he did not break ground within three months' time.
2017–18 Brooklyn Nets season
The Nets would enter the draft holding two first round picks and one second round pick. The highest first round pick would be from the Washington Wizards, who acquired the pick alongside Andrew Nicholson and bringing back Marcus Thornton in exchange for Bojan Bogdanović and Chris McCullough. As for both their other first round pick (which was Pick #27) and the sole second round pick they have, those would be had from their most infamous trade with the Boston Celtics for both Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, while swapping first round picks this year (which was the #1 pick originally). With their original second round pick, they lost that pick to the Atlanta Hawks in order for them to acquire Joe Johnson. On June 20, two days before the 2017 NBA Draft began, Brooklyn would trade their 27th pick from Boston (which became power forward Kyle Kuzma from Utah University) alongside star center Brook Lopez to the Los Angeles Lakers for point guard D'Angelo Russell and champion center Timofey Mozgov. On draft night, the Nets selected freshman center Jarrett Allen from University of Texas with the first round pick they acquired from Washington. Under his sole season there, Allen recorded averages of 13.4 points and 8.4 rebounds per game while making it to the All-Big 12 Third Team as a member of the Longhorns. They also selected the Bulgarian/Cypriot/Greek tri-citizen power forward Aleksandar Vezenkov, who previously last played in the FC Barcelona Lassa out in the Liga ACB in Spain. As a player who previously played for both the Barcelona Lassa and Aris Thessaloniki under the Greek Basket League, Vezenkov earned numerous honors out in both Greece and Spain, including being the Greek League's MVP back in 2015 and winning the Spanish Supercup the same year.