Did the New Jersey Nets tease their Brooklyn logo?

[andrewharrington]

You probably also have to consider the fact that the 'Brooklyn' name is more marketable to a big subset of the NBA's target consumer(s), and possibly better on a nationwide scale given its 'cool' factor. It's definitely among the most famous 'neighborhoods' and/or counties in the world (I only label it a neighborhood due to the fact that it's technically not its own sovereign city).

[PhlyBoy]

Has their been a date of when they will unveil the uni's set or not? It might have been mentioned previously and I might have missed it.

[tBBP]

I believe someone sommewhere back in the previous pages of this thread mentioned the new sets would officially be unveiled in September.

[Gothamite]

As a native New Yorker, having lived in four of the five boroughs, I have to tell you that you're flat-out wrong, Roman. I don't think they've written off any part of the city.

Maybe the Bronx will be a harder sell than the others, but they have a good shot at taking over all five, not just the one they're named after.

You could be right. As I said, I have no first-hand knowledge of New York. But considering how big the boroughs are and "Brooklyn would be the third biggest city in America", I could see those "big city" fans in other boroughs feeling left out and not wanting to root for a team that wasn't theirs.

You'd think so, but no. Having lived in Queens long enough I can tell you that, with the possible exception of the Bronx (and I'm not sure I'm even willing to stipulate that), there's a camraderie among the "not Manhattan" parts of the city. And Manhattan is so in love with Brooklyn that there are almost as many Brooklyn Industries stores in the 212 than there are in Brooklyn itself.

I've lived in this city most of my life, and the parts I didn't were largely spent desperately trying to get back here. I just don't see this whole "writing off parts of the city" thing at all.

[Gothamite]

I'd be tempted to make that bet, Admiral. Especially if I could think of a way in which we could possibly quantify the results.

Won-lost record

Playoff berths and series wins (1 point for making it, 1 for each series win)

Attendance / capacity

Average ticket price * attendance

Local television ratings

Trying to get a balance between on-court and off-court. What do you suggest? We could have something here.

Don't underestimate how badly the Dplans have run the Knicks.

The Dismemberment Plan is running the Knicks?

:censored:ing Dolans. Even my spell-checker hates them.

Admiral, I still don't see how that formula could possibly tell us anything about the Nets' market saturation. Unless the local television ratings were broken down by borough. The rest of it only speaks to the relative strength of the franchises, which is interesting but not at issue.

[facegab]

As a native New Yorker, having lived in four of the five boroughs, I have to tell you that you're flat-out wrong, Roman. I don't think they've written off any part of the city.

Maybe the Bronx will be a harder sell than the others, but they have a good shot at taking over all five, not just the one they're named after.

You could be right. As I said, I have no first-hand knowledge of New York. But considering how big the boroughs are and "Brooklyn would be the third biggest city in America", I could see those "big city" fans in other boroughs feeling left out and not wanting to root for a team that wasn't theirs.

You'd think so, but no. Having lived in Queens long enough I can tell you that, with the possible exception of the Bronx (and I'm not sure I'm even willing to stipulate that), there's a camraderie among the "not Manhattan" parts of the city. And Manhattan is so in love with Brooklyn that there are almost as many Brooklyn Industries stores in the 212 than there are in Brooklyn itself.

I've lived in this city most of my life, and the parts I didn't were largely spent desperately trying to get back here. I just don't see this whole "writing off parts of the city" thing at all.

No offense but having been born and raised in Queens I disagree on the "camraderie" idea. there are 5 boroughs and you have to pick which one you're from. There isn't an us vs manhattan thing. Queens hates Brooklyn, Brooklyn hates queens and we all hate Staen Island.

[Gothamite]

Yeah, but c'mon. It's Staten Island. They deserve it.

I don't see much of the borough v. borough that you describe. Plenty of Brooklynites travel to Queens for baseball, and plenty of Queens travel to Brooklyn for the festivals in Prospect Park.

[tBBP]

What y'all got against Staten Island? Is it because it's connected to that "other" land mass over there....or do y'all hate the Verrazano Narrows Bridge that much? that (I mean, that $11 toll IS kinda ridiculous.)

Anyway, if an outsider's opinion means anything...from what I gathered during my various romps through the five boroughs, if anything, I might say there might be more of a "friendly rivalry", but nothing so much to go to war over?well except Manhattan, where EVERYBODY'S nose is stuck up in the air. (And yeah, the Bronx may exhibit a bit of a superiority complex, for whatever reason they do?best I can guess probably between all the Yankees' success and the whole "birthplace of hip-hop" thing. ) But even still...you New Yorkers have a way of setting all that aside and uniting soon as an outsider goes up there and tries to test you.

And I have so much great fun with that.

[Gothamite]

Get yerself an E-ZPass and the toll is reduced, although it's still out of control.

I don't think anybody still hates Staten Island, although as the only borough not on the subway line it's often something of an afterthought. Longtime Gothamites will remember talk going back to the 1970s of Staten Island seceding from the city. Succession was often seen as being motivated by racial considerations, as the borough used to be overwhelmingly white (90% in the 1980 census). The borough's demographics have been changing of late, and the succession movement has been dead for years, so I'd venture a guess to say it's no longer an issue in the minds of most New Yorkers. But still, we kid.

[BBTV]

I'll be in Queens and Brooklyn tonight. Looking forward to seeing how much Nets gear is really out there on the streets.

[Gothamite]

What brings you to our fair burg?

[BBTV]

I go up pretty frequently, to see friends and (like tonight) go to concerts at Terminal 5.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

I am also a lifelong New Yorker. I identify far more with the City as a whole than with my home borough; as a bike-rider who goes all over the City, I have attachments to places in all four siginficant boroughs. This, of course, excludes Staten Island, to which I have no attachment at all, and which I wish was not part of the City. In fact, I'd trade it straight-up to New Jersey for Hudson County -- I feel much more comfortable in the cities of Hudson County (Jersey City, Union City, Hoboken, West New York, Weehawken) than I do in Staten Island.

But, even for people who do identify with their home borough, I wouldn't say that there is a universal hatred towards the other boroughs. It's true that people in all three other significant boroughs rag on Queens for being soft; and I, who lived as a kid in eastern Queens (uncomfortably close to the City border with Long Island), know what they mean. And I am thankful every day for the fact that I have lived the past 25 years in the urbanised western part of Queens.

But the baseball teams' fans bases do not really break down by borough; I was a Yankee fan as a kid, and, there were always plenty of other Yankee fans in Queens, even in the days when the Mets were winning and the Yankees weren't, during the Yankees' "lean years", in which the Mets won two pennants and one World Series. And Met fans have never been limited just to Queens. (However, since the late-90s resurgence of the Yankees, there are far more Yankee fans than Met fans everywhere; I'd say that the current period sees the greatest divergence ever between the amounts of fans of the two baseball teams.)

Borough rivalries don't enter much into baseball and football fan identification, as all the teams use "New York" as their name. This is the first time we've seen a New York City team explicitly identify with one borough rather than the whole City; so it will be interesting to see how this plays out. (To remind readers of something said earlier in this thread: the Brooklyn baseball club existed before Brooklyn was a part of New York City.)

I will say that I was probably wrong when I guessed that the Nets' Brooklyn identification wouldn't go over well in Manhattan. I am led to this concession by the penetration of the gear in Manhattan stores, and by seeing people wearing the gear throughout Manhattan. But I am not willing to make that same concession with respect to the Bronx. It was striking to me that Nets' gear, which constitutes the hottest sellers at the NBA Store in Manhattan, and which has already become a phenomenon in Brooklyn, was entirely absent (and was greeted with indifference) in the group of stores that I visited along the Bronx's Southern Blvd. In the equivalent strip on 165th St. in Jamaica, Queens, the multiple hat stores were all well stocked with new Net hats; and it was easy to find people wearing them. (Note that I never predicted that the Brooklyn name would alienate Queens people, even though I myself am not thrilled with it.)

While this is hardly an exhaustive scientific survey, I'd bet that a "meh" response is all that the Nets can hope for in the Bronx. As The Old Roman mentioned earlier, the team would certainly have considered this likely response, and would have figured that, on balance, they can live with it given the rewards that the Brooklyn name will bring.

[Gothamite]

I go up pretty frequently, to see friends and (like tonight) go to concerts at Terminal 5.

Ah, my old hood. Excellent.

[TimEOBrien]

A bit bland, no?

__________

EDIT: I have it from a source I trust that these are fiction.

[Conrad.]

of course they're fiction...we've already seen that both unis will have BROOKLYN arched across the fronts as the wordmarks

[sozopol]

I suppose some of you have seen these...

then in response...

and my favorite...

[TimEOBrien]

of course they're fiction...we've already seen that both unis will have BROOKLYN arched across the fronts as the wordmarks

Did not know/remember that.

[BBTV]

So I went to Barclay's center the other day, and was surprised by how unfinished it was. It's going to look damn cool once it's done, but they have way more to do than I was expecting (of course I didn't do any research as to the progress, so I was perhaps unfairly expecting to see a near-completed arena.)

For what it's worth, I did not see a single piece of Brooklyn Nets gear in Brooklyn, Queens, or Manhattan. Granted, I wasn't in Manhatten for too long (and it's mostly tourists anyway), but I was all over Brooklyn and specifically looking for people wearing shirts or caps. None of this is to argue with anyone who claims that it's selling like hot cakes, just reporting my personal observation from my admittedly brief study.

[Gothamite]

Interesting. I also go many days without seeing any, then I see a bunch.

FWIW, I'm watching the replay of Santana's no-hitter right now, and aside from my relief that the black trim wasn't enshrined in this chapter in the team's history, my other observation is that I've seen a fair number of Nets tshirts on the spectators.