Second look at Long Island Nets' first year in Brooklyn; they knew the Coliseum revamp was delayed (but, actually, hadn't planned to stop selling seats at Barclays)

A 4/10/20 ESPN article, One G League team's season three years ago offers a glimpse into the fanless NBA experience, quotes former participants regarding the Long Island Nets' very weird first season at the Barclays Center, where they played afternoon games before a handful of people.

It's a signpost to the NBA's possible short-term future, but also, via Malika Andrews, fills in some important backstory:

Due to a delayed reopening of Long Island Nets' own arena in Uniondale, New York, as well as scheduling and staffing issues at Barclays Center ahead of the 2016-17 season, nearly every one of the Brooklyn facility's 17,732 seats were vacant whenever Long Island took the court that season. 

...LONG ISLAND PLANNED to play its inaugural season in the newly renovated Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum -- 30 miles east of Brooklyn -- but the reopening was delayed. By the time the decision was made to use Barclays Center, the arena was already fully booked with NBA and NHL games, as well as concerts.

Official obfuscation

That was not in the original November 2015 press release, which stated:

The NBA Development League and the Brooklyn Nets today announced that the club has acquired the right to own and operate an NBA D-League team. The new team, the Long Island Nets, will begin play in the 2016-17 season at Barclays Center in Brooklyn before relocating to its permanent home at the new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum for the 2017-18 campaign. 

As I wrote in March 2016, after the Long Island Nets unveiled their new logo and uniforms, the news sneaking out was that the Coliseum would no be ready by the end of 2016, as originally predicted, and would reopen in 2017. (That would be April.)

And the constraints were not fully explained, nor accepted, at the time. They were not, as far as we can tell, planning to play in a nearly-empty arena. As I wrote in January 2017, NetsDaily had cited potential season ticket sales, and team VP Alton Byrd told Newsday that students and shift workers could attend.

It didn't happen. As NetsDaily stated, "We reported it's a money issue. First few games were poorly attended-- less than 1300-- so they decided to only open it for select games." In other words, they went to Plan B.