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    The One Cool Thing About The Brooklyn Nets, Jay-Z, Is Gone

    This is what happens when you stake your personality on one-fifteenth of one percent.

    When you think of the Brooklyn Nets, the first thing you think of is Jay-Z. Even if the first thing you think of is technically Brooklyn, the black-and-white color scheme, or the Barclays Center, Jay-Z is implicit in what you're thinking about: he either played a role in creating it, or he was a major part of the branding and promoting thereof. The deal the Nets franchise made with the public when it moved to New York's largest borough this season was that the Nets represented cool, and they represented cool because of the God MC.

    Well, the God MC Is Dead, at least as far as the Nets are concerned. Jay-Z, aka Shawn Carter, aka Young Hov, aka Beyoncé's Steadman, just started a sports agency, and in order to represent basketball players, he plans on selling off his one-fifteenth-of-one-percent share in the team, Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski reports. What does this mean for the Nets? It means that the one cool thing about them no longer exists. But don't the Nets have other cool qualities? No. Here's why.

    Brooklyn: NOT COOL. Girls and artisanal pickles might be appealing to some groups, but they are not really anything anyone thinks of as exciting in the context of basketball. The only artisanal flavor the Nets are associated with is the chalky aftertaste of sadness and construction dust in the mouths of the people whose land Bruce Ratner stole to build the Barclays Center.

    The Barclays Center: NOT COOL. Too rusty.

    The Nets' Aesthetic: Still pretty rad, but was partly designed by Jay-Z, so NO LONGER COOL. Imagine if the best thing about you was clothing your ex bought.

    Deron Williams: NOT COOL. Look at those sweatpants.

    Brook Lopez: NOT COOL. Lopez is basically the epitome of the classic comic-book nerd, except also a seven-foot-tall All-Star. Actually, that makes him super-cool. Nevermind.

    Gerald Wallace: Gerald Wallace recently said his "confidence is totally gone," so NOT COOL. Insecurity is not cool.

    Joe Johnson: NOT COOL. He wears a bracelet with his own name on it.

    Mikhail Prokhorov: NOT COOL. He's a Russian industrialist billionaire, and yet I've seen no evidence of tiny giraffes at the Barclays Center.

    Moral of the story: now that Jay-Z's gone, the Nets have to stop playing boring and lifeless basketball if they want to be cool.