Joe Tsai Calls Knicks Title Run ‘Embarrassing’ for Nets in Blunt NetsDaily Interview
Joe Tsai is not spinning it. The Brooklyn Nets owner said out loud what a lot of his fan base has been thinking since June: the Knicks winning a championship is a bad look for the team on the other side of the East River.
Tsai spoke to NetsDaily this week and called the Knicks’ 2026 title “embarrassing” for the Nets. That is not the kind of quote you usually get from an NBA owner about a crosstown rival, but Tsai apparently decided honesty was the play.
“Every year, some team is going to win a championship,” Tsai said. “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.”
He did add a pivot. “But in business or in competition, in sports, or in anything, you shouldn’t let the embarrassment factor affect how you perform. 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 Bigger Problem
The truth is the Knicks winning is not the Nets’ actual problem. Brooklyn’s real problem is Brooklyn. The Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden experiment produced one playoff series win, cost a mountain of picks, and left Tsai’s team in rebuild mode.
Brooklyn has not had a winning season since 2023. Last year the Nets went 20-62, the third-worst record in the NBA. That is a lot of losing to sit through while the Knicks throw a parade up Broadway.
Tsai bought a majority stake in the Nets from Mikhail Prokhorov in 2019 and picked up Barclays Center in a separate deal. He was supposed to be the modern, deep-pocketed owner who could out-spend and out-think the Knicks. Six years later, the Knicks have the banner.
The Rebuild
Brooklyn has made some interesting moves this offseason and stockpiled draft equity. The path back to relevance is there. It is just a slow one, and slow does not sell in New York when the other team is a defending champion.
Sean Marks and the front office deserve credit for not chasing the moment. They have the assets to make a real swing when the right star becomes available, and Tsai has shown he is willing to write the checks. What they cannot do is fast-forward through the next couple of years.
What Tsai’s Quote Really Says
Owners usually run the corporate playbook when asked about a rival. Tsai skipped it. He knows Nets fans are frustrated. He knows the noise around the franchise is loud. Saying “embarrassing” out loud is a way of acknowledging it without pretending otherwise.
It also puts pressure on his own front office. If the owner is publicly bothered by the rival winning, the message internally is clear. Get better, faster. Free agents notice quotes like this too. Ownership caring is not the same as ownership winning, but it is a starting point.
The Nets are not catching the Knicks any time soon. Tsai just said the quiet part with a microphone in front of him.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
