At arena site media event, Nets forward Humphries mouths bromides, Yormark claims Barclays Center "is about the community"

It was just two years ago that Nets guard Devin Harris stepped up as the face of the team's move to Brooklyn, replacing the departed Richard Jefferson, who outlasted the original faces, Jason Kidd and Vince Carter.

Harris is gone now, replaced by Deron Williams, and yesterday, at a Nets media event held at the Barclays Center construction site to highlight the September 28, 2012 opening date, the player mouthing Brooklyn bromides was forward Kris Humphries,

The Brooklyn Paper reported:

Humphries, a Minnesota native, said he’s yet to really hang out in Brooklyn, but plans to “explore it a little bit.”
Still, he offered a bit of advice to critics worried about traffic snarls once the arena opens.
“Just come to the game and you’ll be a part of the excitement,” he said. “You don’t want to be walking down the street and see everyone coming from the game — you want to come to the game and hopefully be a part of a great victory and a lot of excitement.”

He's got a great grasp of life in Brooklyn. There will be events some 200 nights/days a year--are residents supposed to attend all?
Where was "superstar" Brook?
The Brooklyn Paper reported:

Brook Lopez, the Nets superstar center, was scheduled to join Humphries for the tour, but did not show. Barry Baum, a team spokesman, said the big man “was delayed.”

I'm not sure whether he got up late or just bagged on the obligation, but Lopez, though an able player, is no "superstar." If he were, the Nets might be closer to the playoffs.

An endorsement

The Brooklyn Paper reported:

Workers predicted that the arena would blow Brooklyn away.

Were they going to say it would suck?

Yormark says...

Patch, in the simple SEO-optimized headline Barclays Center Will Open Sept. 28, 2012!, quoted the ever-credible Nets CEO Brett Yormark:

“The Barclays Center of Brooklyn is about the community, and the community will be the first to sample it,” he said.

"Spectacularly trendy"?

In a Wall Street Journal essay headlined Turning Hipsters into Hoopsters, Jason Gay wrote:

Just wait: That first season, they are going to be spectacularly trendy. Everyone you know is going to go at least once. It will be weird.

And the Nets—or whatever Mikhail Prokhorov's team winds up being called—are not the only thing that's going to be happening at the BC. There will be concerts, boxing, tennis, a circus. They want NCAA Tournament basketball. You could probably sell out a Jennifer Egan reading.

And you will be able to ride your bike. Among Monday's revelations was that the arena—surrounded by train stations, but a lousy place to drive a car—will have parking for up to 400 bikes.

I think he's right that it will be trendy--maybe not spectacularly--and that it will be weird. And that the test of the arena will not come in the first year.

It's also telling that, in the world of AY coverage, a newbie like this writer thinks it's a "revelation" that there will be bike parking. That's been part of the plan for years.