Wear Brooklyn At? Nets gear repped by armed robber

The rapid penetration of Brooklyn Nets gear has been celebrated on sites like The Brooklyn Game, with posts like Rep Your Nets and Wear Brooklyn At.

The image below, from a video embedded in New York Times post on an armed robbery at a Bedford-Stuyvesant deli, probably wasn't what Nets brass had in mind.



Then again, some small fraction of people wearing Yankees gear get busted. So maybe it's another sign of the team's arrival.

About those Yankees caps

The Times reported 9/16/10 on the phenomenon of criminals disproportionately wearing Yankees caps.

One criminologist said the trend might be a result of what could be called the Jay-Zeffect.
The rapper Jay-Z has worn a Yankees cap for years — on his album covers and in his videos — and has helped turn the cap into a ubiquitous fashion accessory for urban youths (“I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can,” he boasts in one song).
Criminals might be wearing Yankees merchandise not because they are fans of the team, but because they are fans of the cocked-hat look popularized by Jay-Z and other rappers, said the criminologist, Frankie Y. Bailey, an associate professor at the University at Albany, who is writing a book about the role of clothing and style in criminal cases.
“He wears it and makes it look cool,” Ms. Bailey said of Jay-Z and the cap. “It’s almost like the Yankees have acquired a kind of street rep, a coolness.”
It is but one of several theories. Sports marketing analysts say it is a matter of numbers: the Yankees sell more merchandise than any other baseball team.