Did they sign a big time coach? And did they fire and sign a better prez to stop drafting D-leaguers and signing terrible players?

They signed a head coach, Kevin Loughery, and an assistant, Rod Thorn, in 1973-74, who then went on to win the ABA championship. Thorn handled x’s and o’s.

Loughery had retired from the NBA the previous year after serving as the player coach for the 1972-73 Sixers who won only 9 games.

Irony much?

then the nets came to NBA and knicks made them pay 4 milion dollars and nets had to sell their franchise player Dr. J to pay em hope they rot to bottom of the league

Perhaps the biggest similarity is that the league essentially engineered the best player in the league going to the Nets to coincide with them opening their new building. Now 35 years later the best player in the league will be available and the Nets are about to open a new building. Hmmmm.

and hopefully one year of failure in New York will land the Nets back in New Jersey like it did when they came to the NBA in the first place. Now that would be sweet irony.

Oh, Lebron is swithching to #6 next to honor his favorite player when he was a little kid…Julius Erving. The number he wears now honors his favorite player as teen and where was Michael Jordan born? You guessed it…Brooklyn!

@Issac

Do you really think one year of failure in NY will erase the 30+ years of failure in NJ?

Yes, the Nets would spend one billion dollars to build an arena in Brooklyn and then abandon it.

What year did the ABA Nets sign Will Farrell? I don’t remember Dr J in the movie, I’ll have to watch it again.

@Isparten

Will Ferrell played on a different team. If you want to see Dr. J you’ll have to rent “The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh”.

at Tin Man:

“Do you really think one year of failure in NY will erase the 30+ years of failure in NJ?”

What I would still like to find out is how the Nets would do if they announced a permanent move to Newark? I’m fairly certain the fan base (much of which has been driven away in the last 5years) would be back in full force and attending games on a much more regular basis.

I have seen what that arena did for the Devils since their move and they aren’t even drawing from inner city Newark like the Nets surely would.

Isaac is correct as the Newark arena’s accessibility has improved attedance from what they had at The Swamp and the ticket prices are even higher now which equals more revenues.
The Devils have drawn fans from the Ironbound section and some from North Newark, but the Nets will draw from the entire city and surrounding areas such as Elizabeth, East Orange, Irvington, Hillside which are cities that do not have a lot of hockey fans but tons of hoops fans.

The Nets would do well in Newark. Too bad it wont be permanent. I am holding on to the slim hope that the Brooklyn deal fails and they get to stay in NJ, but at this point all I can do is hope.

Give me a break. The Devils have been one the best teams in the NHL over the last 2 decades with 3 Stanley Cups and they play in a brand new building. They should be the hottest ticket in town but they have among the poorest attendance in league, currently ranking 24th out of 30 teams.

If NJ doesn’t start supporting the Devils they’ll also be in Brooklyn in few years.

Yeah, the Devils sell out every game. The Devils are LOSING MONEY in Newark. One part of this deal is that the Devils have to pay Newark the money Vanderbeek says he can’t pay because he’s losing money.

More fans from the IRONBOUND? How many people live in the Ironbound…50,000, 70,000.

Yeah, Newark is paradise.

@NI

The excuse that the Devils weren’t drawing fans despite being an elite team was that they were playing in the Meadowlands. So they moved to Newark into a state of the art building and guess what? They still can’t draw any fans. Now the same excuses are being made about the lack of support for Nets.

Putting basketball in Newark would sell a lot better than putting hockey in Newark – that much is OBVIOUS.

Some on here continue with the notion that New Jersey can’t support a pro team under any circumstances and it’s just not true.

The obstacle is that North Jersey has its share of Knicks/Rangers fans and South Jersey has its longtime Sixers/Flyers supporters.

Therefore for an NJ team to truly succeed it needs some support. As far as the Nets go that support would finally come in Newark due to the inner city community that is ideal for the NBA to add to the current fan base that exists primarily in the suburbs and surrounding smaller cities in Northern NJ. A new arena with amenities that most fans (not me) consider ideal for a sporting experience and the the improved transportation options.

It’s no-brainer. If New Jersey were given even a five-year guarantee that the team would be in Newark and we had a chance to support it, the team would succeed – as long as Ratner is finally out of the picture and the basketball folks were allowed to put a decent product on the floor.

New Jersey cant support an NBA team under any circumstances. Period. No one ever made money on the Nets until they sold them.

YOur opinion on this subject must be discounted because you never provide any facts to back it up, just lay out more of your opinion when challenged. Since you never provide any facts. your opinions should be discounted or dismissed.

So the improved amenities and and transportation options that didn’t work for the Devils will magically work for the Nets? And how are the inner city residents, that are supposed to make all the difference, going to afford NBA prices?

There is one thing I agree with you about;

“The obstacle is that North Jersey has its share of Knicks/Rangers fans and South Jersey has its longtime Sixers/Flyers supporters”.

North Jersey like Southern Connecticut is essentially just a suburb of New York with no identity and because of that won’t support a team.

at Net Income:

“Since you never provide any facts. your opinions should be discounted or dismissed.”

The feeling is absolutely mutual. I have asked you over and over for the research done by the Nets or the city of New York to back up any real interest in this project and specifically the Nets coming to Brooklyn and taking over what has been established as Knicks country.

Other than one random poll number without any specific questions that were entailed in said survey, you have provided nothing on this highly relavant topic in the 6 years since Ratner stole the team.

at Tin Man:

“North Jersey like Southern Connecticut is essentially just a suburb of New York with no identity and because of that won’t support a team.”

Sadly there is some truth to this – both in terms of Northern NJ and Southern CT. That being said, not everyone subscribes to this notion and there are people proud to be associate with those respective areas. The Nets have proven they can draw at least a 3/4 full house when the team actually had direction and treated its fans like human beings at a 20,000 seat arena which admittedly has its major flaws. That arena, despite my like for it has many issues (specifically transportation and lack of nearby dining) that prevent fans from filling it up on a regular basis especially in recent years when the product has been three rungs lower than atrocious and the ownership has branded the team “Nets Basketball” instead of the New Jersey Nets.

Why would people from NJ possibly show up for this team under these circumstances? (I go because I don;t want to regret not seeing them play while I still can)

And why aren’t all those DIEHARD Nets fans in Brooklyn making their way out to NJ in anticipation of their new team that they just can’t wait any longer for? Guess that will start next year in Newark? Memo to the folks at NJ Transit – don’t start printing up all those round-trip tickets from Penn Station-NYC to Newark just yet.

@issac

The Brooklyn Nets could very well wind up being a failure. It will take a generation to build a loyal fan base but in the beginning they’ll rely on the excitement of the new arena and the fact that they will be located in the geographical center of the largest metropolitan area in the country. They will also benefit from their Brooklyn identity which is very strong for millions people. They’ll also have increased corporate participation and brand value by being a New York team.

We don’t know how the Brooklyn experiment will but we do know that the Jersey experiment has been an absolute failure.

Btw, do you know what the definition of insanity is?

Get FA David Lee (If Cousins isn’t drafted) and win more games than the Knicks, and they will start getting New York City fans by next year.

Its about winning, but having the most popular Knick would help too.

at Tin Man:

you know you made some good points that were fair and well-stated although I don’t agree that New Jersey has been a failure – the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But what was the point of finishing your argument in the manner you did? I haven’t taken any personal shots at you just because I disagree with your thoughts about the Nets.

@Issac

My last line was not meant as a personal shot and I apologize if you took it as an insult. It’s an old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. It was meant to highlight the futility of keeping the Nets in New Jersey.

I respect your passion in trying to keep your hometown team and I feel bad for the Nets fans that have supported them over the years but unfortunately there just haven’t been enough of them.

It could be worse, the Nets could be moving to Seattle. At least they’ll still be in your media market and when the sting wears off you’ll still be able to attend games if you wish.

at Tin man:

Thank you for clarifying. I’m not one to agree to disagree so I must point out to you that if the Nets were to move to Newark to Newark long-term it wouldn’t be doing the same thing over and over as you suggest.

Moving to an urban area in NJ with an arena that has more amenities and several nearby gathering spots would likely give the team the boost it has longed for while being able to maintain its Garden State fan base.

I will be the first to admit if that failed over the long-term (not in a 2-year lame duck situation) then the team simply cannot be successful in the state of New Jersey but unfortunately we may never get to find out if this could make it work.

@ Isaac:
As I’ve showed you in previous links, NY Nets’ ABA attendance on Long Island was actually higher than most NBA teams during the mid 70s.

Attendance dropped during their one NBA year b/c they had already sold off Dr. J and had already announced their move (after a stop over at Rutgers) to the Meadowlands.

At the time, Meadowlands Arena, w/20,000 seats, excellent sight lines, a modern, clean design, and only miles away from Midtown was considered the Holy Grail.

The NJSA built it with hopes of luring away the Knicks and Rangers as NYC was going bankrupt and had become a victim of white flight. Withn the safe suburbs but only 7 or 8 miles from Midtown Manhattan, it seemed like a can’t miss venture.

The only reason the Nets are in NJ now is b/c Roy Boe wanted to beat the Knicks and Rangers to this Holy Grail. Unfortunately for Boe, construction was constantly delayed, nobody came to Piscatway to watch the Nets at their temporary home and facing his own bankruptcy, Boe had to sell to Joe Taub and the Secaucus 7. From what I understand the group simply absorbed Boe’s massive debts.

Anyways, Taub held the Nets for a few more years at Rutgers where the Nets continued to be the WORST draw in all of the NBA before finally moving to their brand new gem in the Swamp. At first it really was a gem as the Nets actually outdrew the Knicks for a few years. Once the novelty died down, Nets attendance slipped back down towards the bottom of the league.

It stayed towards the bottom even during the golden years of Kidd-RJ-Martin. Even as the Nets were in the finals and before Bruce Ratner came along, they were still 26th in attendance. 23rd the next year, and 26th again in 2004 before Ratner bought the team.

http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance//year/2002
/year/2003" target="_blank">http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance//year/2003
/year/2004" target="_blank">http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance/_/year/2004

As I’ve also stated before, attendance actually went up w/Bruce Ratner.

http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance/_/year/2007

Perhaps, a thank you is in order for giving the team a bigger profile and getting them out of what now everyone sees as a 30 year mistake. Well, everyone but you that is.

PS: Bring back those cool-azzed unees!