The Billionaire Who Wants Brooklyn to Win

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.

Dressed simply in black trousers and a sheer sweater, she led her dinner guests — Meek Mill, Johnson and the actress Lake Bell — to their seats courtside.The New York Liberty, of which Wu Tsai is a co-owner and an ever-present energy force, crushed the No.1-seeded Minnesota Lynx, 87-71.

John Turturro, a devoted fan of the team, was also in the stadium that night — seated in a crowd that sustained a roar nearly without interruption.The Liberty, who took the championship title two years ago, advanced to the semifinals, though were eliminated Friday night by the Atlanta Dream.At 60, Wu Tsai, one of the most celebrated stewards in the W.N.B.A., finds herself at a moment of creative transition, aspiring to leave a broad cultural imprint on Brooklyn that would extend beyond her basketball empire.

In late July, she and Joe Tsai, the billionaire chairman of the tech giant Alibaba and her husband of 30 years, announced their split.(“While they have grown apart,” a spokesman for the couple said at the time, “their divorce is amicable.”)In the intervening months, Wu Tsai has prepared for the openings of various public arts initiatives she has sponsored in and around Barclays; settled into a carriage house in Brooklyn Heights, where she is spending more and more time; and turned up at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard,” a film she produced.It is a story of two sisters who speak in unison, fall in love with the same man and together dig a tunnel through a mountain range.

Wu Tsai read the script and was transfixed.“I thought, OK, a movie like this might not get m...