The Nets' New Public Address Announcer Has Long Dreadlocks And Owns His Own Cigar Lounge

The New Jersey Nets are moving to Brooklyn next year, according to sources. (They're playing out the string in Newark this year or something.) People, especially those who are fans of rapper Jay-Z and center Johan Petro, are excited about this move. But the Nets can't move to Brooklyn and still be the Nets because then people will laugh at them because the Nets are worthy of being laughed at.

So they're gettin' wacky!

Enveloped in a cloud of pungent smoke, David Diamante puffed on a custom-blend cigar, hand-rolled in the Dominican Republic, while ticking off the various jobs he has held and hobbies he has pursued. Motorcyclist, D.J., surfer, boxing announcer. Diamante, 40, was sitting amid the leather chairs and ashtrays of his cigar bar in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, a few blocks from where he will perform his next adventure. [...] Tall, lean and elegantly dressed, with dreadlocks that reach past his waist, Diamante admits that his look is unconventional for the fraternity of public-address announcers. He said he spent most of his time here in the dimly lighted, wood-paneled cigar lounge he opened two years ago, whose walls hold framed photographs of boxers like Muhammad Ali.

Diamante has a boxing track record, so it's not like Mikhail Prokhorov met some dreadlocked guy with a golden voice in a smoky cigar lounge. Though it's definitely more fun to think of it that way.

Nets Announcer Shows Flair and Hair [NYT]