At the Brooklyn Nets’ home opener against the Charlotte Hornets last week, one longtime fan pointed out the strange dynamic inherent to New York City basketball fandom. He was jealous of places like Boston and Philadelphia, he said, because the entire city organizes itself around one team. Sports franchises, after all, are avatars of civic pride, and the very best organizations come to reflect the values of the cities they represent. (Think the Showtime Lakers or the Grit-and-Grind Memphis Grizzlies.) But in New York, home to both the Nets and the Knicks, fan bases are pitted against each other by fans, media, and sometimes even franchise leaders.
For a long time, the Nets could take solace in their cross rivals’ decades-long stretch of ineptitude. That vanished when Jalen Brunson and company lifted the Larry O’Brien in June, leaving Brooklyn with some soul searching to do. “It doesn’t make us feel very good,” Nets owner Joe Tsai told NetsDaily over the summer. “It irates our fan base and it is embarrassing.” As The Ringer’s Zach Lowe pointed out on his recently launched Substack, the Knicks’ title cost the Nets “an entire generation of fans.”
I, for one, have never understood why commentators are so obsessed with the size of Brooklyn’s fanbase. I am, obviously, a hugely biased homer, but you don’t hear the same concerns when it comes to other little-brother teams like the Clippers or teams, like Wizards, whose games are sparsely attended. Even as they’ve tanked these past couple of years, the Nets have maintained a 99% attendance rate and are the eighth most-valuable franchise in the entire league. Still, I have to hear talking heads argue that the team should move back to New Jersey? I might be salty, but that’s stupid.
Nevertheless, there is clearly angst about building up a coalition of Nets faithful. On his podcast Curious Mike, where I wish he would be less curious, the team’s star forward Michael Porter Jr. recently said, “When we play Knicks, Celtics, Philly, Lakers, it’s mostly their fans. It’s crazy.” And he’s not wrong: it’s a weird time to be a fan of the Brooklyn Nets—the team’s fallen twice in the lottery and is trying to kickstart a rebuild in the shadow of one of the most storied franchises in the NBA. So I made my way over to the team’s training facility in Sunset Park to see how the Nets are tackling this problem with pillars of the present and future.
