The fifteen investors who own the remainder of the team, including co-chairman and chief executive Finn Wentworth, can see returns on their investment, but it won't be easy; the Nets have been losing more than $1 million a year recently. Their plans sounded at first like public-relations bunkum to Michael Rowe, the Nets' president hired by the previous owners, who is the son of a Newark cab driver. "These are captains of industry. What is in it for them?" he wondered. But now he insists they are for real: "Katz isn't a tree-hugger, but he is a poor kid who grew up in New Jersey and wants to help while he's still young and aggressive."

That may mean branching out. "I don't think we are just a basketball team forever," Rowe says. "These owners think on a large scale, and play for high stakes. They plan to expand this company -- but they want to do it to help other people. The only thing you can be sure of is that this team is going to change."

What unites the financial players behind the new Nets is their rise from humble backgrounds in the weedier precincts of the Garden State. Chambers grew up in Newark, and Wentworth's parents moved from Newark to a nearby town shortly before he was born. Katz is a native of inner-city Camden.

Raised by his mother -- his father died when he was a year old -- Katz went to Temple University on scholarship and worked over the summer selling dog food. From the beginning, he was drawn to the limelight. At Temple, he and his friend Bill Cosby ran a weekly showcase called the "Hour of Pleasure." Cosby would recruit rock-and-roll acts like the Mamas and the Papas and Tom Paxton to perform on campus, or try out his own amateur routines. "Lewis always said he loved me," Cosby said at a recent charity roast in Katz's honor. "And the feeling is mutual. I love me, too."

In his senior year, Katz went to work as a newspaper reporter, apprenticed to Washington columnist Drew Pearson. Pearson became a father figure, standing as Katz's best man at his wedding, and Katz later named his son after him. Katz continued working with him even while he began preparing for a more lucrative career as a lawyer, attending Dickinson Law School and clerking for the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In 1966, he hung out a shingle in Cherry Hill, a Camden county suburb, and hired his mother as his secretary. His practice grew to include local celebrities like players for the Philadelphia Flyers and Eagles, as well as the Motown singer Jackie Wilson.

Along the way, he grew interested in Democratic politics. "When I was younger, I thought that people who didn't 'have' belonged in the Democratic Party," he says. "I guess it just came from being part of the underclass and having no father, no economic security -- you really do get an understanding of the difficulties of life."

In 1972, he was elected as a Democrat to the Camden County council. And when a 14-year-old boy awaiting trial for breaking a window hanged himself in a Camden youth shelter, Katz was moved to action. Comparing the facility to something out of Oliver Twist, Katz formed a committee to investigate and eventually put his own homeroom teacher from Camden High School, Mary Previte, in charge of reforming the shelter. Previte, now a state assemblywoman, is still in charge of the shelter. "Lewis Katz has always been very generous, helping us buy paperback books or a gerbil cage for a classroom," she says.

Katz gave up elective politics after two terms in office. But he stayed involved as a fund-raiser and contributor, notably for a Camden friend of his, a young politician named Jim Florio.