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Nets' debut season ends with home loss to undermanned Bulls; columnist suggests "honeymoon ends"

It's only a game, right? But it was supposed to be meaningful "for" Brooklyn, which somehow had the collective memory of the last time a major league team was in a post-season tournament, more than 50 years ago. (Quick, do the math: what percentage of Brooklynites still remember?)

New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro wrote, in a preview:
All year long, we’ve summoned the memory of the old Brooklyn Dodgers to walk from the cornfields of our memory to stand alongside the Nets, to provide historical guidance and local perspective to this fresh journey in the Borough of Churches.

But tonight the Nets get the chance to do something even those old Bums never did. Tonight, on Brooklyn soil, the Nets get the chance to not only defend their home turf but to win a clinching postseason game
The Nets/Barclays CEO was optimistic.
A surprising loss

The Brooklyn Nets, after coming back from a 3-1 deficit to tie the series at 3-3 with the Chicago Bulls, had the home court advantage last night. The Nets had the fourth seed, the Bulls the fifth.

The Bulls were missing injured star Derrick Rose and two other starters. But they lost 99-93, and Nets Coach P.J. Carlesimo will probably take the blame, though there were surely multiple factors. (Oh, and yes there was illegal parking/idling at multiple locations near the arena.)

 As the Daily News columnist Filip Bondy wrote:
Carlesimo saw the same thing we all saw in Game 7. The Bulls came into the Barclays Center with the kind of lineup that ought to make the Miami Heat giggle while reviewing game films. No Kirk Hinrich. No Luol Deng. In theory, Chicago had no reason for hope other than a scrappy mentality and a virtuoso coach, Tom Thibodeau.
Playing at home against this decimated roster, in the most important game of their professional lives, the Nets inexcusably emerged from the locker room flat as the floorboards, run out of their own building during the first two quarters without a semblance of interior defense.
A loss of innocence?

Vaccaro wrote of the departing fans:
And make no mistake, when they left, when they disappeared into the subway or walked off toward the nearby parking garages, they took something else with them: the Brooklyn Nets’ innocence.

Starting this morning, first thing, the honeymoon ends on Brooklyn’s unconditional love affair with its basketball team. It was a nice run, 89 games in all, 52 of them victories. But that’s over. Starting this morning, starting right now, this is just another New York City team assuming the same burdens and blessings — and boo-birds — as the ones that play in Manhattan, or Queens, or The Bronx.
And if the Nets were to have won, and then understandably succumbed to the defending champions, the Miami Heat, in the second round, the honeymoon would have continued and the "innocence" maintained?

The innocence is part of the sports media's focus on game-related drama and an unwillingness to look at the larger picture of subsidies, tax breaks, land discounts, and cutthroat corporate behavior.

As for the "love affair," puh-leeze. Brooklyn has 2.5 million people.

The story in tweets

First, a couple of sports columnists:



The CEO of the Brooklyn CHamber of Commerce:


A local reporter:


The Atlantic Yards project's most prominent opponent:


This is Fake Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire team owner:


Lead writer for The Brooklyn Game:


The son of the fired coach:

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