Madison Square Garden is closing for renovations — but only if you’re a girl athlete:

Proving the old line that the best way to find real news in the Times is to read the stories end-to-beginning, the Paper of Record offers up a classic buried lede in its article today about the upcoming renovations to Madison Square Garden. Round about the sixth paragraph, sportswriter Richard Sandomir reveals:

One of [Madison Square Garden’s] properties, the Liberty of the W.N.B.A., will have to play home games elsewhere beginning in 2011. A possibility is the Prudential Center in Newark, where the Nets will play for two seasons before moving to their new home in Brooklyn.

That’s home games for three years, as that’s how long the $775 million-or-so plan to gut the World’s Most Famous Arena and build a new one inside its shell is scheduled take, in order to limit construction to summers and thus avoid inconveniencing the boy teams that play there in the wintertime… [read more]