NBA Rumors: Brooklyn Nets lost 144 million dollars last season?

When it comes to buying a championship, no team tried harder than the Brooklyn Nets who ended the 2013-14 season with a $103 million dollar payroll. Of course, couple that with the NBA’s dollar-for-dollar luxury tax and you’re looking at one insane salary cap bill.

More from Brooklyn Nets

• NBA Rumors: 5 best trade destinations for Pascal Siakam
• The new NBA flopping rules explained
• NBA rumors: 4 teams not named Heat or Nets engaged on Damian Lillard trade
• Could James Harden take a page out of Kevin Durant’s trade request playbook?
• Damian Lillard trade request: The best offers Nets and Heat can make to land star

Of course, there are far more expenses to running a professional sports organization outside of the player payroll which include coaches, assistants, team employees, arena payments and much, much more. Combine it all and it becomes quite costly, something the Brooklyn Nets are well aware of as according to Grantland, the franchise lost upwards of $144 million dollars last season.

"The basketball side of the Nets’ business is projected to have lost $144 million over the 2013-14 season, according to a confidential memo the league sent to all 30 teams in early June. (Grantland has reviewed and verified the memo with a half-dozen sources.)"

The vast majority of the Nets’ financial problems come from that previously mentioned luxury tax which ended up costing the Nets nearly $90 million dollars by itself.

Grantland does go on to say that the financial loss is just from the basketball operations side and does not include any positive payments the franchise would receive from the Barclays Center, etc, so the figure overall likely isn’t near that high.

Still, the fact that the basketball side of operations lost that much money is shocking.

Earlier today it was reported that the Brooklyn Nets were looking to ‘get younger’ and given what we know about their finances now, it’s pretty easy to see why.