It’s tremendously alienating. I’ve had plenty of time to reckon with this inevitable championship for the Knicks, not just a great team but the clear Team of Destiny for weeks now, but it’s still hard to swallow.
I am not actually happy for the innumerable Knicks fans around me. I am not quite “happy for the city” either, a begrudging middle ground that, as a born-and-raised Manhattanite who roots for the Yankees, Giants, and even the Rangers with an incurable case of New York Exceptionalism that would disgust the many New Jerseyans that visit this site, I thought I could get to. No. I am an outsider in my own home. This, of course, is the true essence of Nets fandom…
I love my friends….
I’ll say it so you don’t have to: It doesn’t really matter that the New York Knicks are champions, not as it pertains to Brooklyn’s on-court success. Of course, those future Knicks picks might not be so valuable…
…but that’d still be the case even if Victor Wembanyama made eye-contact with Stephon Castle before throwing that pass. You, Nets fan, are still allowed or even encouraged to be excited for a future with Egor Dëmin and whoever the team drafts at No. 6 overall in ten days.
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Regarding the rest, there’s little to be done. If there is anything, anything at all surprising about Fort Greene/Downtown Brooklyn/Park Slope drowning in blue-and-orange ecstasy…
…it’s that any of us lived long enough to see the Knicks win another title. As Ock Sportello told me, this would be easier to accept if the franchise were an indomitable, Laker-esque force rather than a tortured soul with The Greatest City in the World and, therefore, the moral arc of history behind them. LeBron James told Cleveland that his crowning achievement was for them. He wasn’t exactly lying, but we all know that 2016 as The LeBron Title. Kawhi Leonard put a whole nation in The North on his back in 2019; alas, that is The Kawhi Title.
But 2026 is The New York Title. Jalen Brunson cemented his place in NBA history, of course, but he also cemented his place as a contender for the most beloved athlete in NYC history, simply a different plane of existence. I will always remember his 45-point NBA Finals closeout game; many more will remember what felt like eight million New Yorkers partying on the streets until the sun came up, from the true die-hards to the property-destroying streamers to the Kips Bay transplants singing their “Empire State of Mind” transplant anthem because it’s something to do on a Saturday night and hey, New York is about all those things.
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So does it matter that the Knicks are growing their fanbase faster than the Nets? Does it matter that this mode of achievement is inaccessible for your favorite team despite also playing in New York City?
“No” is a very reasonable, healthy answer. We’ll all rejoice when the Brooklyn Nets are one day competitive again, perhaps an evil thorn in New York’s side just as they were in the mid 2000’s. I was in the building for Nets-Bucks Game 5 in 2021; the crowd was packed, loud, and very pro-Nets, a low bar but cleared nonetheless. I enjoyed not just the talent on that team, but I loved the vibe. Their best players were hired guns, mercenaries who, under cover of darkness, joined forces in Brooklyn of all places to wreak havoc on the NBA. It fit.
Admittedly, cold villainy is a difficult vibe for a franchise to lean into — I’m not writing this to ask the Nets for anything in particular, maybe other than more Josh Minott quotes. But as Ock Sportello explains: “My grievance, ultimately, is not with the Knicks for reminding me that I will never be a New Yorker, but for the Nets for attempting to convince me that that is something to be ashamed of.”
As a New Yorker, my shame is slightly different, though still distinctly Nets-flavored. I root for the team that moved here and immediately shed any trace of their New Jersey past when I wouldn’t tolerate that quality in a friend. It is the irrepressible feeling that Mikal Bridges was justified in committing the Nets’ cardinal sin, openly pining for a trade across the river, which allowed him to better his life and career and become a local legend. He won.
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When I woke up on June 25, 2024, I did not think I’d be standing alone at the Belmont LIRR station at 2 A.M. on June 26, so I did not throw a hoodie in my backpack. Of course, I did not know the Nets were going to make a franchise-altering trade during the fourth quarter of the Commissioner’s Cup Final between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx, moved to UBS Arena from Barclays Center so as not to interfere with next day’s NBA Draft.
But I couldn’t tell if I really was cold, or if it was coffee jittters, or if the Six-Pick Mik trade(s) had given me goosebumps all by itself. In any case, I called anybody I figured would be awake, excitedly explaining that the Nets had saved themselves from mediocrity. That the next two years would be painful, but perhaps Cooper Flagg or Ace Bailey or AJ Dybantsa or Darryn Peterson could be in black-and-white.
As you all know, that didn’t happen. Lottery luck was never guaranteed. Such is life. Brooklyn still owns future picks from that deal, and they do have flexibility; not every trade or signing or draft pick reaches its ideal outcome. But only the Nets could make one of the great trades in franchise history, setting themselves up to tank for a two-year period that produces the #8 pick, the #6 pick, and said trade being mocked by a rival team as they accept their Larry O…
Only the Nets, I tell ya.
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Alright. No more. For real. Let’s have a great summer!
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