"Our history is the borough right now," the then-New Jersey Nets' Fred Mangione said in November 2010, anticipating the Brooklyn move, and that is truer than ever.
NetsDaily's "Net Income" (aka Bob Windrem) yesterday wrote The subtle end of the New Jersey Nets, noting that the Brooklyn Nets' "new warm-up jackets say 'established 2012,' commemorating when the team arrived in Brooklyn," though they previously said “established 1967,” which was when the predecessor New Jersey Americans launched.
Similarly, the New Jersey Nets' championship banners hanging in the Barclays Center have been reissued in black-and-white, the colors of the Brooklyn Nets, not the red-white-and-blue blend of the predecessor team.
Windrem adds that no longers does any New Jersey-based newspaper cover the team, and most New Jersey fans won't have TV coverage, due to a dispute between YES and Comcast.
He notes mutual disappointment between New Jersey fans and management, and suggests the latter are now focusing on the Long Island market. But as a New Jerseyite, he expresses loyalty, and regret: "But looking up in the rafters and seeing black-and-white banners. Is that really necessary?"
Not everyone shared his sentiments, but several commenters did:
NetsDaily's "Net Income" (aka Bob Windrem) yesterday wrote The subtle end of the New Jersey Nets, noting that the Brooklyn Nets' "new warm-up jackets say 'established 2012,' commemorating when the team arrived in Brooklyn," though they previously said “established 1967,” which was when the predecessor New Jersey Americans launched.
Similarly, the New Jersey Nets' championship banners hanging in the Barclays Center have been reissued in black-and-white, the colors of the Brooklyn Nets, not the red-white-and-blue blend of the predecessor team.
Windrem adds that no longers does any New Jersey-based newspaper cover the team, and most New Jersey fans won't have TV coverage, due to a dispute between YES and Comcast.
He notes mutual disappointment between New Jersey fans and management, and suggests the latter are now focusing on the Long Island market. But as a New Jerseyite, he expresses loyalty, and regret: "But looking up in the rafters and seeing black-and-white banners. Is that really necessary?"
Not everyone shared his sentiments, but several commenters did:
- The notion that that history would just be written off entirely depresses me.
- If the Brooklyn experiment had paid off thus far and we were annual contenders, then sure, I can see wanting to distance themselves from the Jersey swamps of mediocrity, but to do it right now is just unnecessary
- It’s says something that Brooklyn is simply conceding NJ basketball fans to the NYKs.
- Thinking purely in terms of a branding strategy, I don’t get it. The Nets are the only professional sports team that actively tries to shrink their market rather than expand it.
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