It's Brooklyn's world, the Knicks just live in it.
How do I summarize a team's season when there's no history in which to compare it to? Sure, the Nets have a storied past—one filled with memories of Irving, Carter, Barry, Coleman, Petrovic and that Kidd guy—but Brooklyn's basketball team is but a newborn infant of the NBA. This was the Nets' first season in Brooklyn, and by extension, New York City (excluding the ABA Nets), so the only conceivable way to gauge the level of success they have achieved—winning their most road games ever en route to matching a franchise-best 49—is to compare them to the other team that has been residing in New York City for 67 years.
I'd like to start by telling you I was a fan of the New York Knicks for the first 10 years I lived in Brooklyn. And as you can imagine, it's done little to spark my interest in professional basketball or their storied franchise—even if they do play in the world's most luxurious rat spa. Sorry: three first-round playoff loses in 12 years just won't cut it.
And while I'm not old enough to gripe in a voice-over for a Ken Burns movie about losing the Dodgers to Los Angeles, I know the borough has been long-starved for (and well-deserving of) a professional sports team. As a staunch supporter of the place that's borne my return address longer than any other residence I've lived in these United States, I didn't need Jay-Z's influence to switch sides. Brooklyn is my home, and the Nets are my home team.
My comrade in Manhattan will likewise try to summarize the Knicks 2013 season, and I'm sure he's going to remind you that they won their first division title in 19 years and Carmelo Anthony shed his ball-hogging reputation to hog the ball just enough to win the season scoring title. Yeah, the Knicks won the Atlantic and have a slightly better record, and we could argue all day about whether the shooter happy Knickerbockers or the Nets' size are better suited for a long playoff run. But instead of using logic and reason to try and sway you, let me simply ask you a few questions:
- Would you ever expect a Knicks team who fired their coach mid-season to finish with 49 wins?
- Where is Carmelo Anthony from? Where is recent Hall of Fame inductee Bernard King from? Hell, where does Spike Lee live?
- What team has a player that averages over 11 rebounds per game?
- Who has a better defense?
- Who is younger?
- With one Wallace retired (again) and the other Wallace completely healthy, who would you take in a street fight?
- Where does Lena Dunham film her HBO show? (OK, bad example).
- And always the most telling point of all: Which team is run by James Dolan?
People will say an unhealthy portion of Brooklyn's fan base are (groan) hipsters who only started rooting for the Nets when they moved across two rivers to arrive in a publicly-funded stadium built upon a plot of land in the exact same location Robert Moses wouldn't let the Dodgers build a publicly-funded stadium 56 years ago.
And maybe those folks are right—at least to some degree. But every legacy needs to start someplace. After all, they're not making movies about a guy who wore No. 42 in Manhattan. What better time to jump on the Nets bandwagon than during a historic season that will see Brooklyn host its first professional playoff game since Jackie Robinson laced 'em up?
As Doc Rivers, coach of a Celtics team the Knicks will face in round one, will tell you, no one cares about winning the division—it's all about playoffs. And the start of the 2013 playoffs signals a new and exciting battle in the war for New York basketball supremacy. With the regular season series knotted at two wins apiece, unless they meet in these playoffs or one of them wins a championship in this new Nets era, the only measuring stick we have is Brooklyn's 100% success rate of making the playoffs. And that's way better than the 25% rate I endured for the past decade.
