The Brooklyn Nets and their fans hope to conquer their city, then the league

By Charlotte Wilder
FOX Sports Columnist

BROOKLYN, New York — April 5 felt like that first hopeful spring day of the year, when leaves and New Yorkers start to think about emerging from hibernation.

A surprisingly warm breeze swirled around the lines of fans waiting to enter Barclays Center, where they would soon watch the Brooklyn Nets take on the New York Knicks.

To the left of the entrance, a group of about 70 people were protesting the "COVID Passport," a digital badge that allows vaccinated fans to forgo Barclay’s requisite COVID-19 test. The anti-vaxxers gathered around a man with a megaphone who was yelling things such as, "The government will know what you had for dinner if you get this shot!"

But all the fans in line wore masks and seemed eager to finally go to a basketball game. David Rosenstein and his 11-year-old son, Emmett, were excited to watch their red-hot 2021 Nets face the warmer-than-usual 2021 Knicks. They seemed pleased with Brooklyn fans’ turnout.

"We’ve been to other Knicks-Nets where it was mostly Knicks fans in years past, and it was embarrassing," David said. "You felt like you were at an away game."

Times have changed because that evening, the reduced crowd was about 60/40 in the Nets’ favor. Some Nets fans and Knicks fans were even attending the game together, including Larry Govan and Khalid Jones, who both grew up in New York. 

"We out here in full force, Knicks fans!" Jones said, gently roasting Govan. "You see the blue and orange out here. We’re out here to support our team with no true superstars. Y’all about here front-running because you’ve got five of ‘em!"

"Hater!" Govan shouted back, laughing. "Brooklyn all day. We’re winning it all — tell LeBron that!"

Despite the fact that the LeBron James-less, Anthony Davis-less Lakers would crush Brooklyn a week later, a Nets Finals appearance is almost expected at this point. They play the Sixers on Wednesday in a battle for first place in the East. 

Jones is right. Brooklyn’s roster is stacked higher than Kevin Durant on stilts: Besides luring KD and Kyrie Irving to Brooklyn before the 2020 season, the Nets added James Harden early in this campaign.

GM Sean Marks recently tossed Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge into the mix, too. The team's supporting cast of role players is also impressive. Even with Spencer Dinwiddie injured, Joe Harris, DeAndre Jordan and Bruce Brown round out a killer team.

Let’s put it this way: Brooklyn has 41 All-Star appearances among all its players. Even the head coach, Steve Nash, was an All-Star eight times.

What's more, not only is the team heavy with talent but it’s also heavy with some of the biggest personalities in the NBA. Irving, Harden and Durant are three of the biggest lightning rods in the league. Harden had a very public falling out with Houston, Durant is known for spending a lot of time "defending" himself on Twitter, and Kyrie, well ... perhaps the least perplexing thing about him is that he once said he believed the Earth is flat. 

"If you’re a Nets fan, [this team] is your Avengers," said Desus Nice, co-host of the late-night show "Desus & Mero" on Showtime and, more importantly, a lifelong, long-suffering Knicks fan. "But to me, this is Thanos and his friends. I don’t like it, but they’re very strong."

This Nets team isn’t exactly beloved outside of Brooklyn. But are they even beloved within the city limits? 

Like many millennials, the team only moved to town in 2012 after growing up in New Jersey. The Knicks were in New York City first, and many Brooklyn folks grew up rooting for them. Hell, Spike Lee — the Knicks’ biggest fan — grew up minutes away from Barclays.

But 11-year-old Emmett, who has only ever known the Brooklyn Nets, doesn’t see it as a rivalry. 

"Between fans, it is, but the teams are so far apart, it’s not like they’re head-to-head close," he said. "The Nets are the better team now. They used to be a .200 team. Now they’re an above-.600 team. I think they’re just better, and everybody’s kind of like, 'I want to be a Nets fan now.'"

Not everyone. But 2021 might not just be the year Brooklyn makes it to an Eastern Conference finals or even plays for a championship. 

It could also be the year the Nets begin to chip away at the basketball soul of New York. 

***

Conor Byrne was drawn to Knicks fandom in an era when hope wasn’t an illusion. He was 6 when the 1994 team sent Patrick Ewing, John Starks and Charles Oakley to the All-Star game and made it to the NBA Finals. 

Since then, however, hope has mostly come in the form of players and coaches who looked like water in an oasis but ended up being mirages. In 2016, when Kristaps Porzingis rolled into town, Byrne encapsulated what it means to root for the New York Knickerbockers in "Porzingod," a short film he wrote and directed starring actors and real-life Knicks fans John Leguizamo and Adam Mucci.

(Full disclosure: Conor’s brother, Tyler Byrne, who produced the film, is my boyfriend. And yes, there are pictures of Ewing and the 1970 championship team in our apartment).

Five years later, the film has proven its own point. Porzingis has gone from being a Knicks unicorn to an often-injured player on the Mavericks who is at the center of many trade rumors. Porzingod turned out to be just another false idol, another prayer unanswered. Even after the Knicks finally win a championship (knock on wood we live to see it), Byrne’s short film will forever capture the holy romance of rooting for a team that sucks. 

"It reminds me of the movie 'Gran Torino,' when Clint Eastwood teaches the young kid to ‘talk like a man,’ and it’s all just complaining," Conor said. "Stuff like ‘My job sucks, my boss is up my ass, my wife is giving me shit, my doctor says I need to stop eating bacon.’ And it's that type of camaraderie. Complaining about the Knicks is a culture unto itself."

There’s something romantic in caring so much about a squad that doesn’t give you anything back. Even if your team constantly loses, you’re winning at being the most loyal. 

"If you take joy in the fact that it’s hard to live in New York, you’re gonna enjoy the Knicks because we wear that with a sense of pride," Desus said. "You know, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And the Knicks are like, 'Hey, we’re trying. We’re doing our best.' And that’s like Knicks fans."

Something more than commiserating keeps loyalists hanging on, though. Despite knowing the team’s perennial shortcomings, Knicks fans still believe all of this suffering will someday pay off. And this season has shown glimmers of hope.

"It’s not your typical ‘woe-is-me' Knicks fandom shit, so that’s been great," said Elizabeth Vlesson, a fan who was waiting to go into the arena when the Knicks and Nets faced off. 

It’s true. Coach Tom Thibideau hasn’t run young players into the ground just yet, the team has been above .500 in 2021 for the first time since the 2017 season, RJ Barrett is figuring out how to hit shots, Immanuel Quickley is a promising rookie, and Julius Randle is an All-Star. The Knicks have at times had the best defense in the league, and they lost to the Nets by only two the previous two times they played.

"It seems like there is a cohesive plan and some hope here," said Jason Concepcion, @netw3rk on Twitter, avid Knicks fan and host of "Takeline" and "ALL CAPS" for Crooked Media. "The emergence of Julius Randle as a legit star player in the NBA has been fantastic, and I believe it is sustainable. They haven’t had any kind of typical Knicks overpay-for-a-downtrodden-veteran move that locks up financial flexibility for a few years. Hopefully we make the playoffs. I feel hopeful about the future."

Some fan bases might not see being over .500 as a crowning achievement. But aside from wanting to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2013, Knicks fans just want to see systemic progress. This year has delivered that.

But what if there were an easier way? What if you didn’t have to go through hell to get to basketball heaven in New York City?

What if you could just be a fan of the Nets?

For more up-to-date news on all things NBA, click here to register for alerts on the FOX Sports app!

****

Nets fandom is like health insurance: When the team moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn in 2012, it was a qualifying event that opened an enrollment period. You either came over with the team as a lifelong fan from the Garden State or you opted in when they showed up in Brooklyn, like David Rosenstein. 

"We live in Brooklyn, so to have a hometown team means something," David said. "Do I want the Knicks to be bad? No, I don’t. I just want the Nets to be better." 

If you came with the Nets from New Jersey, you’ve earned this. There aren’t as many lifelong Nets fans as there are Knicks fans, but they’re out there, and they’ve had some taste of success. The New Jersey Nets had a good run in the early aughts with Vince Carter, Jason Kidd, Kenyon Martin, Richard Jefferson, etc. 

Other than that, the Nets have been awful. They were bad before their 2002 and 2003 Finals appearances, couldn’t afford to keep good players after and have been rebuilding since coming to Brooklyn. 

But Adam Rave has been there every step of the way. Rave grew up in Bergen County in the '90s and became a fan because his uncle took him to games at the Izod Center. Rave moved to New York around the same time the Nets did.

"Kerry Kittles was a first-round pick in 1996 and the most exciting new player, but they were awful," Rave said. "It’s overwhelming all of a sudden to be the villain and get this attention. All my friends were Knicks fans, and I was always the laughingstock. It’s amazing, and the product on the floor is incredible."

Knicks fans respect that. But if you didn’t grow up rooting for the Nets and you recently jumped on the train, Knicks fans see it as a soft move. Almost every New York fan I spoke to said something like what Desus told me: 

"It’s like, 'OK, I’m not gonna jump on a bandwagon team,'" Desus said. "[The Nets] are a bandwagon team now if you weren’t a Nets fan before. If you’re just joining now because they’ve got all these players, you’re one of those terrible ‘I root for the Cowboys, the Yankees, the Lakers, you know, whoever’s winning’ people. But part of being a sports fan is that grind, being there through the thick and the thin."

While abandoning the Knicks is heresy for some, it’s freedom to others. I put a call out on my Instagram story asking to hear from Knicks fans who switched allegiances to the Nets. A few Knicks fans responded with statements such as "Because they are cowards" (shoutout to my pal Jayson Buford). 

It’s an understandable sentiment: Knicks fans say that people who defected for the Nets were never really Knicks fans at all, and it makes Knicks fans question how much of a Nets fan a deserter could even be. After all, when your friend starts dating someone who cheated on their significant other with them, it’s hard to trust that that person won’t cheat on your friend (or in this case, your enemy), too.

That might be true. But Knicks’ ownership, helmed by James Dolan, has made enough mistakes through the years that for some people, hanging on has been too painful. 

There’s a whole thread on Reddit from Nets fans who abandoned the Knicks. One user named BK-Jon wrote on r/GoNets, "I was more of a Knicks fan than a Nets fan before the Nets moved to Brooklyn, but I made the full switch at that point. It was my escape from having my team controlled by James Dolan. So it has been great in that regards [sic]. There are lots of Nets fans like myself."

Many people responded to my Instagram question saying Dolan’s poor treatment of Lee and Oakley and — more recently — Ewing’s issues with security at Madison Square Garden drove them away. Others were sick of watching their favorite players get traded. One guy just wrote, "I liked Jay-Z’s music more than Dolan’s."

Which brings up another issue. The Nets are cool. They’ve got exciting players, Jay-Z is a former part-owner, their front office seems to know what it’s doing, and Barclays is in a very hip part of Brooklyn.

So Nets fans don’t seem to feel the same vitriol against Knicks fans that Knicks fans feel against Nets fans. If the Knicks are the resentful seniors, the Nets are the hot freshmen coming in thinking there shouldn’t be too many hard feelings. It reminds me of that scene in "Mad Men" when Michael Ginsberg is angry at Don Draper and follows him into an elevator. 

"I feel bad for you," Ginsberg says. 

"I don’t think about you at all," Draper replies. 

"I would root against the Knicks," Rave said. "I didn’t want to see my friends happy. We had a little rivalry going. But now that they’ve been so bad for so long and the Nets are so good, it’s kind of cute. Now that the Knicks are decent, it brings more energy into the NBA and New York City. And I love the NBA, so if it gets the city to focus more on the NBA in general, it’s good."

That seems to be one thing both fan bases can agree on. 

"Now it’s like, will they be able to take it all? Will someone come upset them?" Desus said. "It’s adding drama and suspense to basketball. It’s a net positive for the culture. But from a Knicks viewpoint? I don’t like it."

***

George Esposito is the owner of G. Esposito & Sons, an Italian sandwich shop in the nearby neighborhood of Carroll Gardens that his grandfather started in 1922. He has a tattoo of the New Jersey Nets' logo on his arm.

"I took my kids to games when my sons were growing up in New Jersey," he told me the other day. "But now, eh. I’ve kind of fallen off."

When I started writing this story, if you asked me to think of Nets fans, I had legitimately no idea what to picture besides Esposito’s half-hearted arm tat. I haven’t seen much Nets gear in my Brooklyn neighborhood or those surrounding it. 

But the other day, a kid who was probably 10 or so passed me on the sidewalk. He was wearing a Nets mask. I immediately thought of Emmett, the 11-year-old at Barclays, who never knew a world in which the Nets didn’t exist as this city’s team. 

And then I got it. Real, authentic Brooklyn Nets fandom is going to come from the next generation. 

You’ll find moms and dads who take kids to games and end up getting into it themselves along the way. There is a chance to grow something real and meaningful here. It’s going to take some time, but I think 2021 will mark the start of the era we’ll be able to trace fandom back to in 20 years. People will remember it all — Kyrie’s unstoppable drives to the basket, the way Harden could decide on a dime if he felt like scoring 40 points in a game, even Durant’s burner accounts on Twitter — with fondness and sweet nostalgia.

The Nets have to earn it, of course. They haven’t won Brooklyn’s soul just yet. But if they can make it to the NBA Finals or even the Eastern Conference finals or even make a few respectable playoff runs in the next few seasons, this could be the Nets’ version of the 1973 Knicks that hooked Gen X or the 1994 Knicks that hooked millennials or the Linsanity era that hooked Gen Z. 

This is Brooklyn’s moment. And if the Knicks are any indication, even if the Nets screw it up down the line, they’ll still have a die-hard fan base. 

Because as any good sports fan knows, misery loves company. 

Charlotte Wilder is a general columnist and co-host of "The People's Sports Podcast" for FOX Sports. She's honored to represent the constantly neglected Boston area in sports media, loves talking to sports fans about their feelings and is happiest eating a hotdog in a ballpark or nachos in a stadium. Follow her on Twitter @TheWilderThings.