I was aware of the New Jersey Nets from the very beginning, but wasn’t a fan. Their entry into the National Basketball Association in 1977 coincided with my first year as a sports-card collector. But my family lived in the Bay Area, so the only team I cared about was the Golden State Warriors, with Rick Barry and a young Robert Parish. (Little did I know that the granny-style free-throw shooter Barry was born and raised in New Jersey and had played two seasons with the ABA’s New York Nets.)
For a couple of years, I collected every sort of card: football, hockey, Star Wars, Mork and Mindy, Charlie’s Angels, The Muppet Movie. But soon enough, Reggie Jackson captured my imagination and baseball took over my world.
We moved to Maryland and then to central New Jersey. I still followed basketball somewhat—Magic, Bird, Kareem. Amit and Gadi’s dad took us to a Nets game at the Brendan Byrne Arena. I met then-mascot Duncan.
But if the ’80s me had a basketball team, it was the Philadelphia 76ers. (Central Jersey is funny like that; you get both NYC and Philly stations and aren’t sure who you’re a suburb of.) Dr. J was the man. Interestingly, he’d been on the Nets too. But the team couldn’t afford Erving’s contract when they paid their way into the NBA, so the good Doctor went to the Sixers. When I got my driver’s license, Katie and I went to the Spectrum to see Erving score his 30,000th career point. (We received commemorative certificates that night, and for years it has killed me that I can’t find it. Maybe Katie has hers.)
Still, baseball was my true sports passion, and specifically the Yankees. That has remained the case, but in 2003 things started to open up a bit. My great buddy Joe moved away from Hoboken, and I found myself with a lot more free time on my hands. Steve and I purchased a half-season Nets plan for 2002–03. It was a blast. I could drive to the games at the Continental Airlines Arena (which had been the Brendan Byrne Arena, and would become the IZOD Center) and listen to Chris Carrino and Tim Capstraw do the post-game show on the radio on the way home. I really loved going to games.
And I genuinely started to appreciate and enjoy basketball. I’d watch those doubleheaders on TNT. Couldn’t get enough of west-coast late games during the playoffs. When I’d travel, it was always comforting to flip on some random basketball game on the hotel TV. (Still is.)
Back in Jersey, we loved the players. Jason Kidd of course, and Richard Jefferson, Vince Carter, Kenyon Martin, but also the less glamorous: Zoran Planinic, Brian Scalabrine, Rodney Rogers, and so many others. There were also devoted fans you couldn’t miss who we quickly grew to love, such as Dancin’ Phil and the Hex Guy. Soon after we started regularly attending, Lawrence Frank became the coach, and he was our guy. Good times, bad times, we supported the team, and I really felt like I was part of something.
Each year, Steve and I would buy a mini-plan—tickets to 10 games or so. I enjoyed friendships with the ever-rotating cast of account managers, especially Adler, Liz, and Wally. We loved to be there at the first game of the season, last game, and around Christmas when there’d be Santa basketball at halftime. We had other favorite halftime performances such as frisbee-catching dogs, the Simon Sez guy, and the Nets Senior Dancers. The Jersey connections were the best, whether it was Joe Piscopo, Hillside Elementary’s Drums of Thunder, a Jumbotron message from James Gandolfini, and a classic video clip of Bruce Willis revving up the crowd during game 4 of the 2003 NBA Finals. Yippee-ki-yay!
But nothing lasts. During only our second season as ticket holders, it was announced that the team had been sold to Bruce Ratner and would be moving to Brooklyn. I wrote about it back in 2004 and was very proud to learn my essay had been tacked up on a bulletin board at Jersey City’s own WFMU.
Still, there were legal challenges and economy-related construction delays, and it seemed like the move might never happen. We hoped not, anyway. Even though it slowly became almost impossible to find team merchandise at the arena with the words “New Jersey” on it. And the new ownership didn’t seem very committed to putting a winning team on the court. Kidd was gone, then Jefferson, and Carter, and they weren’t being replaced by top-shelf players. Then Russian zillionaire Michael Prokhorov bought the team, Coach Frank was fired, but the downward spiral continued. (Did anyone really think LeBron was going to play here, with such a shoddy supporting cast? Or, more recently, Dwight Howard?) A team that had routinely made the playoffs now had one of the worst records in the history of the NBA. Crowds dwindled, except when a high-profile opponent was in town. It was no fun to show up at a game when there were more away jerseys than home in the crowd. It was demoralizing. We’d been gutted, sold for scrap, and nobody cared. Why improve the franchise before the splashy move to Brooklyn anyway?
The lease ran out at the IZOD Center and the team announced it would be temporarily moving to Newark. That last game at the Meadowlands, April 12, 2010, was pretty sad. We’d miss the arena, familiar faces, and good friends like the turkey ladies. As a nice touch, the team let fans shoot a free throw after that game.
So last season we found ourselves at Newark’s Prudential Center. It was an interesting change of pace, I suppose. It’s a nice building. There were new food stands to try out. I missed driving to games—parking is sparse by the arena—but enjoyed walking through the Gateway Center to and from Newark Penn Station. (After games, with all the closed shops in the walkway, it has that mellow feel of arriving on a late flight and heading to baggage claim.) Sometimes I could hear the post-game show on my phone, if the illegal radio app was working.
But something had truly changed. The Prudential Center never really felt like home. Signage everywhere reminded you that it was a hockey arena first and foremost, home to New Jersey’s last real remaining team, the Devils. (This is despite Mayor Booker’s recent feud with the Devils’ owner, over money of course. You don’t have to follow sports for very long at all—or life, really—to learn that money is all that seems to matter.) And the Nets’ Jay-Z co-ownership era just started to feel empty. Was it this increasingly grade-B celebrity culture that inspired Kim Kardashian to sniff around our enthusiastic but dopey forward Kris Humphries? (Last season, we also had Maria Sharapova’s fiance on the team.) Then Hova and Beyoncé stopped showing up at games, and stopped booking prominent r&b acts to perform. Halftime “entertainment” was now youth basketball games. It was finally official that 2011–12 would be the last season in New Jersey, and the organization couldn’t even pretend anymore that it wasn’t in a holding pattern.
The final season arrived. Eventually. First there was a long NBA lockout that the owners seemed in no hurry to resolve. It looked like there might not even be a season. (And why should there be? The league’s TV money was guaranteed either way.) Disillusioned, Steve and I did not purchase a ticket plan for the first time in a decade. Besides, it would be cheaper to buy tickets on StubHub. (Four dollars! Two dollars!) Even with the reduced schedule, I still managed to get to five games. The Jersey-shunning organization had now seemingly changed its tune (slow ticket sales, maybe?), and the slogan this year was “Jersey strong, Brooklyn ready.” Celebrating 35 years in New Jersey. Whatever.
But Steve and I would not miss the last game. In mid-February, we scored decent mid-court seats for the April 23rd finale, a $33 value for $12.95 each, plus the inevitable StubHub fees. Money money money money.
And today was April 23. The game was listed as sold out, but there were noticeable empty seats throughout the arena, especially in the luxury sections. Still, it was a much more sizable crowd than usual and there was, dare I say, a “playoff atmosphere.” Fittingly, the Philadelphia 76ers were our opponents. No Dr. J on this squad, and after a strong start to the season, the Sixers were limping into the postseason (could clinch a berth with a victory tonight). The Nets, with 22 wins and 42 losses, would miss the playoffs for the fifth consecutive year. That’s not easy to do in the NBA.
But the mood was good. A nice hand for Carrino and Capstraw before the game. Longtime P.A. announcer Gary Sussman, absent all season, returned to the mike. Some guy from Jersey Boys sang the anthem; that was nice. The Nets went up 1–0 and… that would be their only lead of the night. But the crowd stayed into it, deep into the game. There were spontaneous chants of “Let’s go, Nets!” Actual spontaneity—not initiated by preprogrammed sound effects. Dancin’ Phil Tozzi was in the house in a shocking-pink shirt. (No sign of Bruce Reznick, the hex guy—I hope he is OK. I put the hex on some Sixers free-throw attempts in his absence. It worked a couple of times.)
Instead of under-11 basketball, tonight’s halftime was a nice ceremony with many former players. It wasn’t as majestic as the recent 100th-anniversary bash at Fenway, but for Jersey it was OK. There was Darryl Dawkins—Chocolate Thunder—in a pink-purple suit even brighter than Dancin’ Phil’s shirt. Beloved former general manager Rod Thorn was on hand, a true class act. Multi-time drug-policy violator/anti-Semite/homophobe Michael Ray Richardson was in attendance; yet no invitation proffered to Jayson “I Went to Prison Because I Killed a Limo Driver” Williams. Otis Birdsong, Derrick Coleman, Albert King, Kenny Anderson, Kerry Kittles, all there. Tim Bassett, whose basketball card I held in my hand when I was 8 years old. (Doug Collins, in the arena as current coach of the 76ers, was also in that stack of cards.) Biserka Petrovic represented her son Drazen.
Video tributes from Carter, Frank, Scalabrine, Kenyon, Buck Williams, Devin Harris, and of course, J. Kidd, the captain forever. Kidd’s kid TJ, the giant-headed toddler of the Finals years, was now a teenager and in the crowd. They dusted off the old Gandolfini video; gave the Willis clip one more spin.
In the third quarter the Nets pulled within one point, further energizing the fans. But it was as close as they’d come. With Brook Lopez and Deron Williams out with injuries, the team was overmatched. Yet again. We lost 105–87. With 14 seconds remaining, the crowd rose to its feet. But not to boo and trudge out, as we had after other lackluster efforts in recent seasons. No. Tonight we applauded. We cheered. In appreciation for the past, and as a warm farewell.
I don’t know how many of us will make the two-river schlep to the Atlantic Yards next season. Personally, I’m still on the fence. When it was rumored that they might even change the name from the Nets to something else, I was prepared to write them off forever. (Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Come on, is there a better basketball team name out there?) It may come down to ticket price vs. income. Or not. I love the Nets, but they broke my heart a little bit. We’ll see if it mends.
Jack Silbert, curator