Burn your toungue jackson, with you around we wont be as bad as an WNBA team right now.

Sigh i bet DPBA, (discapacited players basketball association) has better lineups, coaching and winning record than us!!!

Note: DPBA is an invention of my own, im not looking to attack or disrespect any discapacited player.

Easy solution: Newark!

Hey, besides, I am sure having Kobe on the Lakers did not help his decision.

Look, Phil is saying what a lot of us have been saying and thinking… The NETS just don’t have the proper venue to attract a loyal fan base… Playing in the Meadowlands is to far, and out their we HAVE no foundation to build upon..

@ JustinNJ – Correct answer… Newark (or even Brooklyn) is the only solution… Oh, and one more thing… Get ride of the current management group…

Newark? How can that city be worth a Russian’s billion Rubbles? Come on, he did not sign on for a second rate city. Brooklyn or bust. Newark will present the same lack of fan base. Brooklyn is an ingenious solution to keeping us in the area and making us relevant and competitive with the Knicks. Beyond that it is another city far, far away. But a city.

I remember when Phil was considered part flake, part free spirit, when he was with the Knicks, in the 1970’s. It’s kind of sad to see the corporate, take no chances, marry the bosses daughter, person he has become since. Did anybody catch him on the “Dog Whisperer” last year? Very weird show.

The full quote, from Arash Markazi, Sports Illustrated:

Across the hallway in the Lakers locker room Phil Jackson was reminded of the time he nearly took the Nets head coaching job in 1999, before agreeing to coach the Lakers. “The offer was the best offer I’ve ever gotten as a coach, but they didn’t have what a team needs to succeed; a heartland, a fan base and an energy source,” said Jackson, who lost 15 games in a row as a Nets assistant coach in 1981. “I don’t even know if New Jersey has their own television station, they get most of their feeds from New York and Philadelphia.”

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/arash_markazi/11/30/frank.fired/#ixzz0YMS0pFRU

@geo,

Newark is a city; Brooklyn isn’t. It’s a forgotten stepchild to its’ more well-known neighbor across the East River. Although I don’t agree with Knicks territory (read: Brooklyn) as a realistic option for the Nets, I don’t bad-mouth Brooklyn as a place to live, work, and have fun, so keep your biases to yourself.

And I don’t think Newark can be compared to the Meadowlands. They’re two completely different areas that happen to be in the same State. One happens to be a city, one is a region defined by marshland. Hmmm… not quite the same.

Everything he said was obvious. What about Patrick Ewing? He said he wants to coach the Nets, that’s perfect for Lopez.

Phil is 100% correct on all fronts. The SwampZod Center is the worst venuse in the NBA by a wide margin.
Folks in Northern NJ who root for the Knicks are pathetic too.
And Brooklyn is not Manhattan, it’s no different than Newark except it’s a river East of Manhattan and Newark is a river West.

If Ewing becomes coach, I will become a Knick fan.

What are you trying to prove Net Income? If you are so enthralled with “great fan bases” why don’t you run a site called Knicksdaily.com, Lakers.daily.com or better yet Yankees.daily.com?

You really seem to have no understanding of what the New Jersey Nets and their fans were all about before Ratner came and chased off almost all of the long-time fans of the team.

They’re just gonna get overshadowed by teams that have historically played in NY, like the Knicks, Rangers, Yankees, etc. Newark is also the home of the largest newspaper in the State (The Star-Ledger). And Jackson was talking specifically about the Meadowlands. At that time, the idea of a Newark arena was just being formulated, with no completion date in sight.

New Jersey has its own television station. Newark is the biggest city in New Jersey and like all cities there are good areas and bad areas. The entire city is not a cesspool of drugs and violence. The Nets moving to Newark is not as much of a horror show as some here are trying to portray it. Whereever the Nets go though, I hope it happens soon because they need closure in their fight for a new arena and closure in their ownership stadium in order to move forward. And yes, they need to get out of the swamp.

at Jersey Pride:

“The SwampZod Center is the worst venuse in the NBA by a wide margin.”

Actually I think it is one of the best, and i’ve been to Boston, Philly, Miami, Washington, San Antonio and the Staples center to name a few. There is absolutely no history in these new buildings and much worse if you don’t have a seat priced in the 100 dollar range, you will be sitting on the moon in these buildings that are totally devoid of character.

Say what you want about the Meadowlands, but the arena
has a ton of history – dozens of legendary Springsteen shows, the great Devils runs to 3 Stanley Cup Finals, the breif glory years of the Nets, some great NCAA Tourney moments to name a few. A Brooklyn arena would have held nothing of the sort and will be catering to the upper, upper crust – so once again all the promises Ratner makes about providing something for middle and lower class people of Brooklyn are complete and utter lies.

Lopez has developed quite well with Roy Rogers. In spite of all this misery, he is now an 18 and 9 center at age 21…and he’s pushing the envelope: in the last three games, he’s averaging 27.3 and 18.3 against three players who are his contemporaries: Greg Oden, Spencer Hawes and Andrew Bynum.

For what it’s worth, I received a phone call from a Nets ticket rep today, and one of their selling points was that “the team is moving to Newark next year.” No ifs or maybes, it was presented as a concrete thing.

It’s funny how people want to bash the entire state when anyone who isn’t an intellectually dishonest blowhard will admit that part of the Nets attendance problems has to do with playing in one of the worst venues in pro sports.

@NetIncome

lopez is averaing 12.3 rebounds, not 18.3… the letter number is too enormous.

No one wants to live in Newark.people that live in other city in NJ don’t want to move to Newark .if you live in Westfield , Clark or Woodbridge there is no way you want to live there..

Not that Phil Jackson cares about or wants my respect but I would respect him infinitely more if he had the guts to take on coaching a team like the Nets rather than going from superstar flooded team to superstar flooded team. While it does require some effort to balance egos, having Jordan and Kobe and supporting casts like Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Derek Fisher, etc., a Championship is almost inevitable. Until I see Phil Jackson take a bottom of the barrel team like our current Nets and turn them into Champions, I will continue to believe that he is grossly over rated.

Newark’s advantage isn’t that lots of people want to live there, but of it’s accessibility by mass transit. The Meadowlands parking and traffic are an absolute turnoff, unless you want to spend the entire day there ala NFL.

Who says Jackson picks his spots?

I used to think the Swamp was a good venue until I experienced attending events in Newark at The Rock.

Night and day experience and I would choose The Rock 100 times out of 100 times for any event there over ISwamp.

Ppl in NJ dont want to move to Newark…I’m sure all the ppl in Manhattan and Long Island are just DYING to move to Brooklyn….

He is sort of right. Arenas that are isolated such as the Izod Center almost have no vibe to them. Unless you drive on a normal basis, it’s almost impossible to get to a Nets game there. The Prudential Center will be a big step up for the Nets especailly durring the week. The reason will be because they can go right to Newark-Penn Station with just about every line of NJ Transit. For those driving, it’s not far from the NJ Tpk (I-95) or the I-78 that they can get to either with McCarthy Pkwy (NJ 21) or the I-280. It pretty much works for either one. I am sure that for those two preseason games, there were many that took advantage of that transit.

are you guys seriously comparing brooklyn to newark?? its not even close brooklyn is one of the most diverse and dynamic areas in the country and located in NYC btw, while Newark is a a dirty city located in NJ.

Wow, Issac you have no idea what you’re talking about. Barclays Center wouldn’t get NCAA tournaments? Are you kidding me?

I will not set foot in Brooklyn ever so the Nets lose 6 potential fans right away in my family and I know most other Nets fans that I have spoken too feel the same way.

It will be a horrendous commute from New Jersey and I would not want to support a New York team anyways.

The Rock area in Newark is real safe, easy to get to, already built and enormously successful.

If the Nets move to Brooklyn they may or may not do well there but they will lose most of their already shrinking fanbase and will have to start a new one from scratch in mostly poor and 3rdWorld-like Brooklyn.

It seems like those with intelligence on this blog have come to a consensus that there are two things that enable a team to have success… fan base and accessibility. NJ Nets’ fan base is, as you can guess, New Jersey. They are currently accessible to NY, NJ, and CT tv audience and those willing to commute to a relatively remote section (urban population density-wise) of the NJ turnpike wedged in-between high traffic areas of NYC and Newark for physical attendance. Brooklyn would be a step up in accessibility but to just those in NYC while shunning its NJ roots to a more accessible MSG if your a casual NBA fan in NJ. Newark would allow greater and faster accessibility to NY, NJ, and even CT than any other arena could, it would not alienate the Nets home state fan base, and it would be the cheapest option and can happen NOW. Ratner deserves to die for prolonging this move even 1 day since the Rock opened.

at Kombayn:

I didn’t say an arean in Brooklyn wouldn’t get any big events – I said there would be no HISTORY in that building, meaning events that ALREADY took place. That is very important to me, not luxury suites and fancy restaurants that I would never step foot in at a game.

I don’t hate new arenas per say. They do have some good qualities to them, because I can remember when I saw my first Mets game at Citifield last season and it was a huge upgrade from Shea Stadium, though I will still miss that. However, many of the new sports facilities feel as if they were meant for the rich. The uppermost levels feel almost sloped that one can be scared to look back down. When I do go to Nets games at the Izod Center, I make sure I do some stuff such as going to the bathroom and getting food, because I usually sit almost near the roof. That way, I won’t have go all the way back down, plus my feet sort of lean, so I have to walk very carefully on those near slippery, narrow stairs so that I don’t fall down. Overall, I do prefer quality over quantity.

BTW, there will be a screening for the Battle of Brooklyn over at 36 E 8th Street in Manhattan on 12/10 at 7 PM and you can RSVP to one of these contacts by 12/7 to be there.

(703) 682-9320

LKurcab@ij.org