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November 29, 2010
Knicks or Nets? Yawn.
The Brooklyn Paper
Two bloggers, who blog about the Knicks and Nets, debate why Brooklynites should root for their respective teams, in a waste of Brooklyn Paper bandwidth.
Nets will become Brooklyn
by Jaime Oppenheim
Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov and minor owner Jay-Z speak the borough’s language: swagger. They are unapologetically and unrelentingly authentic in everything they do. The duo’s “Blueprint for Greatness” marketing campaign had less to do with puffery and more to do with stating intentions. The Nets are going to reach the same heights Prokhorov and Jay-Z have reached in building their respective empires. It’s not arrogance, it’s confidence. It’s Brooklyn.
In the end, the battle for Brooklyn’s basketball fandom isn’t likely to be determined on the court. Neither the Nets nor the Knicks are poised for substantial success in the immediate future. Your basketball allegiance will come down to which organization you feel most connected to. When the Nets move into the Barclays Center in 2012, their foundation will settle deep into Brooklyn’s soil, all the way down to the open wound left when the Dodgers were uprooted and moved to Los Angeles over 50 years ago.
NoLandGrab: Authentic? Like dropping Shawn Carter for Jay-Z?
Nets are carpetbaggers
by Mike Kurylo
In order to convince Brooklynites to stay loyal to the New York Knicks, I could portray the New Jersey Nets as “carpetbaggers.” The Reconstruction-era term describes those that move to a new location to exploit the locals. I could mention that the Nets are unstable with regards to their location, having multiple homes during their short existence (Long Island Arena, Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Rutgers Athletic Center, and Izod Center). I could imply that Brooklyn will be their new home until their next new home, and like the Dodgers before them they could head for another city. I could mention the Nets miserable history, and as bad as the Knicks have been recently the Nets have been worse. Just last year, the Nets lost a franchise high 70 games.
Posted by eric at November 29, 2010 8:52 AM