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During Adam Friedland’s interview with sportswriter Nick Wright, Friedland noted briefly that the Brooklyn Nets “shouldn’t exist” as an NBA franchise. Returning to New Jersey is the ideal outcome. Comedic bit or not, Adam is indeed right on the face of things. I was even in the midst of a conclusive article on it. Having witnessed the valiant efforts of the Nets to cement themselves in New Yorkers’ hearts, the thought of them being a dead duck has struck me with a twinge of sadness.
Sports are part of public history, regardless of how inconsequential they may be. If the NBA ever decided to pull the plug on the franchise. While the Barclays Center would be repurposed for other spectacles, people would still remember, over time (while many locals would not with reverence), that the Nets once played there. The early years were full of palpable excitement surrounding Brooklyn’s new team. Jay-Z served as a part-owner and spokesman. The freshly built stadium bore an almost mystical facade, a parquet court graced by the likes of Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce. The Nets also sported a rebranded color scheme to coincide with the move from Newark, and traded away practically their entire future, in a swath of draft picks for Garnett and Pierce, two legends in the twilight of their careers. A transaction that would ultimately doom them. However, it seemed an arguably rational move at the moment, for all intents and purposes.
Looking back to the early 2010s, the Nets were “cool” in the public eye. Their counterparts in Manhattan, meanwhile, appeared rudderless. A Knicks team floundering after a flash-in-the-pan 2nd seed in 2013. In the same summer as Brooklyn’s trade, they exchanged a litany of their own for Andrea Bargnani. A deal that looked genuinely cataclysmic from its start. Given the circumstances, in an area as starved of a contending NBA team as New York, a mere Conference Finals appearance for Brooklyn could have ostensibly made the local market theirs for the taking.
Potential was abundant. The organization also took time with its local initiatives, placing a clear emphasis on fan engagement, particularly on getting the next generation on board. Anecdotally, as a Knicks fan, I’ll attest to their marketing stumping Dolan & Co. with engagement during my youth. Heck, the only professional athlete to ever appear at my school was the Brooklyn Nets’ Alan Anderson. Small potatoes, all things considered, but to my 12-year-old self and others like me, meeting a genuine NBA player was nothing short of mesmerizing.
The meet-and-greet reflected a greater sustained effort. With other similar visits around the city paired with a competitive on-court product, Nets tickets flew like hotcakes in their second season at the Barclays Center. The Brooklyn Nets were winning, upsetting the Toronto Raptors in their 2014 first-round playoff matchup, and their marketing strategy was appealing. Gradual support was the name of the game, which was growing exponentially. Thus, in the Nets’ 14 seasons across the bridge, there have been moments where it seemed the NBA’s experiment had worked. The span between 2012 and ‘14 truly epitomized such.
After a stretch in the NBA’s wilderness post-2015, the aforementioned draft picks, or lack thereof, have stunted the Nets’ growth along with their fanfare. Brooklyn once again began to peek its head from 2019 to ‘21. The Nets made the 2019 playoffs as a 7th seed, with a lively, ragtag squad featuring D’Angelo Russell and Spencer Dinwiddie and establishing some semblance of a culture in the process. The team debuted a stylish alternate uniform fashioned with Coogi lining, the notable attire of Bed-Stuy native Biggie Smalls, and their bench exuberantly got sturdy after buckets. An internet meme was even born from these clips. The Nets seemed to have new life, and New Yorkers were marginally noticing.
Following newfound positivity around the organization, Brooklyn made their most audacious moves to date in free agency that year, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were signed out of left field in one fell swoop, despite media outlets having reported en masse about the Knicks’ courting the duo. Whilst Durant’s Achilles tear delayed the trajectory of success to the next year, the Nets came out of the gates swinging after his return. In January of 2021, the Nets traded with the Houston Rockets for a disgruntled James Harden, creating the NBA’s newest big 3. In just under two years, the Nets had completed an improbable ascent to the pinnacle of marketability. Alá Field of Dreams, the Nets were building a superteam, hoping crowds of before would flock as a result of their success.
As the old phrase goes, nevertheless, “Close but no cigar”. The roster, successful in the 2020/21 season, reached its apex with a 2nd-round playoff exit to Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks. Merchandise sold, given their plethora of stars, and crowds arrived with cheap ticket prices. An air of sustained support, call it authenticity, was missing locally, however.
In the Nick Wright interview, I began this article by noting that Adam Friedland also states he’s found “no fans” in Brooklyn, despite living close to the Barclays Center. In the summer of the Nets’ peak in 2021, I was given my own sample of the sentiment Friedland shared. While at their function, I realized that New Yorkers, from 3rd- to 4th-generation Brooklynites down, maintained strong allegiances to the New York Knicks. Who, that year, were coincidentally experiencing a far more moderate, but authentic, upturn themselves. Through the Knicks nonsense, though, New Yorkers have always pulled for the team despite the troubles. Whether on a losing skid spanning 8 years or not, one could still casually hold a conversation with strangers on public transport about the ballclub.
The same passion locally has never truly been there for the Knicks’ counterpart on the other side of the bridge. Regardless of Brooklyn’s swagger, eyes stayed firmly on the Knicks. A team sometimes referred to as the heart and soul of New York. The Nets’ trio of bona fide NBA legends outshone them on the court, but could do close to nothing in bridging the gap off it.
In the wake of a heartbreaking playoff exit, implosion loomed. The team subsequently broke apart over the next year. The Big Three of Durant, Irving, and Harden departed for Phoenix, Dallas, and Philadelphia, respectively. The Nets’ fragmented support is diminishing even further in the process. In 2026, push has come to shove. The splendor and novelty of the neo-noir Nets seem to have waned altogether in the boroughs. Knicks fever has come home after recent success, and New York, even more than Los Angeles, remains a one-team NBA city. The Nets’ previously noted local engagement efforts, while ongoing, have yielded no tangible support in the boroughs. Many of whom, courted by the franchise post-relocation, are solidly in the blue/orange camp.
On January 21st, 2026, the Nets scored 66 points in Madison Square Garden, en route to a 54-point demolition at the hands of their Knicks. The lowest tally for an NBA team in a decade. Symbolically, it felt like a final blow, and I felt compelled to try and make heads of the matter. By all means, the Brooklyn Nets are a flatlining project. A 54-point loss, not at all the sole reason for framing their conundrum so gravely. As a result, what else is there for the NBA to do than relocate them? Why not return them to Newark, where they’re actually appreciated? Which is a reasonable, even ideal, fix.
Despite the abyss they face in New York, the Nets will remain in Brooklyn, most likely. Answers to this lie in the increasingly interconnected world of the 21st century and the NBA’s place within it. Nets owner, Chinese billionaire Joe Tsai, and the NBA are not ignorant of New Yorkers’ apathy toward the team. Consequently, the initiative of Brooklyn’s franchise has been oriented towards this obvious fact.
Outside of the Barclays Center remaining an objectively quality NBA venue, the Nets stay put in Brooklyn, given their position amongst a globally marketed NBA. An unpopular team in New York itself, the Nets no longer serve this purpose. The Brooklyn Nets are a tangible presence in the NBA worldwide. They are not a New York or even Brooklyn franchise. Nor are they really meant to be at this point. Rather, the Nets serve as a concept for foreigners of what an NBA team in New York is.
Brooklyn’s black-and-white color scheme was partially conceived to woo the very crowds they now emphasize—outsiders to New York who see neo-noir depictions of the city whilst consuming media. Prominent graffiti details on their court/alternate uniforms, and overemphasis on Biggie Smalls and hip hop, also stand as quintessential elements in any New York-fashioned business. Going to college in Charleston, South Carolina, I’ve seen it all firsthand—restaurants fashioned as delis, making chopped cheeses and the like. To New Yorkers, these businesses feel like low-brow pandering. However, they are not for us. We are not the masses.
In other words, the Brooklyn Nets’ appeal stands not for New Yorkers, but for those outside New York. More often than not, the franchise is abroad.
Speaking to this is the sizable Chinese marketing department Brooklyn keeps on payroll. China is the second-most populous country on Earth, and its citizens fucking love basketball, perhaps even more than in many places in the United States. The Brooklyn Nets are included in this adoration, ranking as their third-most-popular NBA team in 2023, despite torpedoed domestic support. The Nets also have a sizable following in other nations, such as France, where they stood 3rd as of 2025. These metrics show that, even outside New York, there are Brooklyn Nets fans. New York is unlike most NBA markets, too, as one of the most visited cities in the world. Therefore, when tourists are known to frequent the location the Nets call home, their support doesn’t necessarily have to be locally based.
There is rhyme and reason for a large fanbase in China. Joe Tsai’s efforts have ensured a foothold there. However, French backing is harder to pinpoint. This confusion speaks exactly to what the Nets want though. There doesn’t need to be a reason, support just has to be there for the Nets. The franchise prides itself on a worldwide fanbase of over 50 million. Playing in a global tourist hub and in an NBA as globalized as ever, the fact that most of this fanbase exists outside their local area, or outside the United States entirely, does not bother them in the slightest.
You, the reader, have probably never met a Brooklyn Nets fan from the five boroughs. Heck I haven’t either. Regardless of that, the Nets are not concerned with New Yorkers supporting them. Their concern lies on the global plane, a focus the NBA has emphasized in the 2020s.
