Clara Wu Tsai

You are listening to a reading of articles and features from the New York Times Style section on the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service.

The Billionaire Who Wants Brooklyn to Win Clara Wu Tsai, a co-owner of the Liberty and Nets, split from her husband of 30 years.

Now she is turning her attention to leaving her mark on the borough.

By Ginia Belafonte Clara Wu Tsai watched the second game of the Liberty's playoff run at the Barclays Center last week seated between her friends, the artist Rashid Johnson and the rapper Meek Mill.

It was a triumphant night, just as she had confidently predicted it would be as she left the Crown Club.

Barclays' private dining space before the start of the face-off.

It's very cool to see the evolution of, like you said, for your players to now be in the WNBA and the growing support that they're starting to get, whether that's medical, whether that's different portions, different deals, different branding.

From a research standpoint and from women's basketball, we know with the Liberty that Clara Wu had kind of helped support a research institute in Boston.

With Portland Fire and the Thorns, it looks like you guys have a pretty incredible facility.

Can you talk to us a little bit about what that's going to look like, how that integration happens with women's sports, supporting women's sport?

... and particularly big, ambitious science.

And so l- largely thanks to various philanthropic donors, including our name r- naming donors, Clara Wu Tsai and, and Joe Tsai, we're able to support research by supporting science that does take people, that does involve collaborations of people from different departments with dif- with new ideas, often things that wouldn't get supported by sort of traditional funding.

And that's more important than ever right now because a lot of that traditional funding is, um, gone or is under threat.

Mm-hmm.

So I have had the privilege and honor to have some wonderful philanthropists find me, however, online or in, in talks, podcasts.

Uh, the first was Clara Wu, who, um, brought me into something called The Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance.

So in 2020, uh, her advisor identified some people that could come together and, and study human performance from a really elite level, hoping that some of the things that we would find out would trickle down to the masses, help with health overall.

And so I was tagged as one of the six leaders of that group and was brought in to lead the female athlete component of it, and I was really excited about that.

Um, what, what do you feel, like, certain about moving into the future, if anything? I don't know if there's anything you can be certain about, but, like, Breanna Stewart f- if Breanna Stewart feels like at least she is pretty settled here, like, what other things do you feel, like, pretty sure about going forward?

Yeah, I mean, when I wrote my, like, postmortem end of the season column, like, I think I wrote s- I had a line where, like, "Nobody should feel, nobody except Breanna Stewart should be comfortable heading into this off-season." Like, I think that if you're Clara Wu, everything has to be on ta- the table to be evaluated and analyzed.

Like, if you're gonna go forward with, you know, another coaching search process, this is, this would be the third coach in three years.

And if you wanna be a championship contender, like, continuity matters, right? And so i- is Jonathan Colt the right person to make that call? I mean, he's made some great, uh, he's really handled the salary cap really well, and kudos to some of his roster building.

L- let's go back to the book to close, David.

You spoke with, again, so many owners, Tony Ressler, Matti Szczur, uh, Ted Leonsis, Bob Kraft, Clara Wu Tsai.

Uh, is there any spec- specific story or particular anecdote that you find yourself at cocktail parties coming back to?

[laughs]