Nets debut tonight, as planned media hype resumes; will subways be back later? what about those $15 tickets?

The Brooklyn Nets debut at home tonight against the Toronto Raptors, and apparently there will be a new mascot, new anthem, t-shirts, and other hullaballoo, maybe some Dodgers nostalgia. It won't be Nets vs. Knicks as planned for Thursday, but it's still going to get noticed.

Will the transportation plan work? Well, the reliance on buses and cars--as well as LIRR--announced yesterday suggested lots of challenges, but this morning there's word that the MTA is testing the renewal of Manhattan to Brooklyn subway service. If it's live by mid-afternoon, that will be a huge help to event-goers.

Update 1:30 pm: The 4/5 trains are back, and the Q train is expected to be back later this afternoon. That will ease the burden on other forms of transit.

The Knicks and the Marathon

Some people don't even think the Knicks should have played last night. Mike Lupica in the Daily News, Mayor Bloomberg's decision to cancel marathon right step in nick of time: The mayor came under heavy attack from critics for going forward with the marathon in a week where over 40 New Yorkers were killed and thousands more left homeless.:

They certainly are going to play a football game in New Jersey on Sunday, Giants against the Steelers. But at least they are not going to play it at the Jersey Shore. And by the way? If that game had been postponed, nobody would have argued with that decision. And the Knicks should not have played a basketball game at the Garden on Friday night, another show that just had to go on.
But why?
There are millions without power in this whole area we think of as New York, and people sit in lines forever to buy gas, where they are still able to buy gas, and then go home and live in the cold and the dark.
Life in Breezy Point will never be the same because of this storm, all those houses lost, gone, like a book of matches catching fire, that fast.
Life in the ravaged parts of Staten Island will never be the same.

Opening hype

The cliches about Brooklyn continue. Writes Lisa Olsen in The Sporting News, Brooklyn Nets opening night: A borough, a team and a dream:

“Walk around and you’ll hear all about how that broke Brooklyn’s heart. Everyone has their story,” the coach of the Nets tells shooting guard Joe Johnson, who nods and says he hopes to hear all the tales. To hear about the Dodgers’ integration of baseball when most other teams refused to budge, about Jackie Robinson’s dignity and grace, about the majesty of Ebbets Field and the hole left when Walter O’Malley moved the team to Los Angeles in 1958, after his dream to build a ballpark along the Atlantic Railroad Yards failed. The spot is where the $1 billion state-of-the-art Barclays Center now stands.

It's not the spot, and it's not $1 billion.

More from the article:

Adam Salazar, a native Brooklynite who produces and films a docuseries called City Hardwood about NYC public school hoops (Lincoln High and Ethan Telfair were featured in Season 1), says bluntly: “Brooklyn is the coolest borough, and we’re going to have the coolest team. I mean, who would you rather root for—Jay-Z’s team or Dolan’s?
“The Knicks are so frustrating, there’s no way the Nets don’t cut into this. Pretty much all of Brooklyn is going to be Nets fans if they aren’t already,” he adds. “You’re going to see people wearing Brooklyn Nets gear more than Knicks gear worldwide in pretty short order. It may take a little while, but within a generation of sports fans the Brooklyn Nets will be the dominant team in NYC.”

Not sure about that, but it is true that the Knicks' ownership has repeatedly sabotaged the team's relationship with fans.

The brand new start

Tbe Star-Ledger reported, in Nets looking for a `brand' new start in Brooklyn:

This is certain: The Nets, replanted across two rivers, are a cosmic leap removed from the place they held in the imagination only a few months ago.
The experts in name equity (another bit of lexicon lifted from the facelift handbook) agree that the first decision was the critical one, to gain the cachet that comes with Brooklyn. And the Nets have another asset, and this may come as a revelation.
They have the Knicks.
If the Knicks are establishment, the Nets are cutting edge. If Madison Square Garden is an opera house, the Barclays Center is street theater. In effect, the Knicks enable the Nets to tell a story, of the underdog lifting up from the shadow of the giant.
...The Nets have their high-end side, with the priciest tickets going for $1,500, but of the arena’s 17,734 seats, the club says 2,000 each game will go for $15.

Actually, those 2.000 tickets represent more hype than anything else. They haven't put 2,000 tickets on sale for fans; rather, there was some limited amount available yesterday on Facebook. Maybe today there will be a few more.