Brooklyn Nets: What Happens in Flatbush Stays in Flatbush

From the desk: MY SOAPBOX AT THE INTERSECTION OF ATLANTIC & FLATBUSH

The Whole Country is Buzzing About the Brooklyn Nets,

All Except the New York City Media That Is.

Listening to the various New York City sports radio shows, of which I am a fan, is becoming painfully irritating to the ear insofar as their inability to simply talk Nets basketball on its own merits.  Very few local radio talk and TV personalities today are conducting a fair, unbiased discussion.  Even fewer, quite understandably, are actually Nets fans.  But must nearly every conversation ultimately be polluted with Knicks talk, and how this will never be a Nets town?  Can it ever be introduction, body, conclusion, and done?  Therefore, I must consider the messengers: the many hosts and sidekicks who are content with being naysayers and (sub)conscious Knicks loyalists claiming professional objectivity. 

If that were only so.

But my intention is not to attack nor disparage; I'm merely pointing out the palatable bias which has been trumpeting over the airways for the last nine years.

I'm a native New Yorker; I'm a lifelong Brooklynite; I'm certainly not naive.  There are biases in every sector of the New York City sports scene, some friendly, others not so much.  The baseball Mets and Yankees and the football Giants and Jets are classic examples of the local media choosing sides but through an openly good-natured albeit antagonistic manner.  That's all in fun because, at the end of the day, each of the aforementioned teams can, at any time, dominate the local narrative and headlines free and independently and out from under the shadow of their neighboring competition.  New York City at times has been a Mets town and other times a Yankees town.  If any team, the Jets somewhat face this second citizen-like disparagement but with a far lesser degree of vigor or dismissiveness than is being directed at Brooklyn basketball.  Even on their worst days, each of the aforementioned area teams is ultimately accorded its time in the spotlight as a New York original should be.

Let me not even delve into how the Brooklyn Americans got screwed over by the New York Rangers!  Therein lay an instance when an entire fan base and the ice they skated on was literally ripped out from under them due to a nefariously engineered broken promise.

Original Six, my ass!  But I digress ...  

Tex Rickard's Rangers since 1940 have won just one Stanley Cup while the Long Islanders won four in a row and the Devils captured three.  

No one ever expected the Isles or Devils to win over New York City.  Both area competitors reside outside the city limits and never once tried planting a flag at Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street.  That was never the plan.  Playing in the nation's largest metropolitan area market, yes, but taking over the city, no.  The Devils have their Newark/North New Jersey fan base and media outlets such as the Bergen Record, NJ.com, et al.  Meanwhile, the Isles will soon be back in the warm embrace of Nassau County where local fans can flip through the sports section of Newsday with great confidence knowing their team is its primary focus.  Barclays Center was an integral component to keeping the Islanders from fleeing the metro area, nothing more.  Their situation has since been straightened out.  Otherwise, the New York Rangers safely own the boroughs, simple as that.

Insofar as how the media perceives the Nets, the Long Island/New Jersey Nets were indeed a low-interest matter in most Manhattan-based sports desks.  After Dr. J's departure to Philadelphia, every so often, Darryl Dawkins would appear on the George Michael Sports Machine after breaking a backboard.  Otherwise, fans got four minutes of Bernard King, Patrick Ewing, or Jim Dolan's follies versus 45 seconds of say, Derrick Coleman/Kenny Anderson, or Dražen Petrović, until that rare occasion someone like Jason Kidd would come along and lead the Nets to the Finals - still with little fanfare emanating out of Gotham radio, evening TV sports desks, or daily tabloids.

The New York Knickerbockers, established in 1946, for long were all the local pundits have ever known or ever needed to care about.  Winning two championships at the end of the 1960s and beginning of 1970s and their playoff run through the 1990s forever cemented their relationship with New York City fans.  Therefore, I do not begrudge the local media after 74-plus years of conditioning.

After commuting to Manhattan or, say, to Bristol, Connecticut, and putting in an honest day's work, where do all these pundits go when the dismissal bell rings?  They go home, or maybe to a game first, then home - not out of the realm of normalcy.  And where exactly is home?  Do these folk live in Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Manhattan?  Because I'm very confident that an extraordinarily high percentage of these people do not live in Brooklyn.  To that end, I would also ask what they would know about the heartbeat of Flatbush.  How much time do the voices pumping Brooklyn's second city narrative spend walking the sidewalks, driving the streets, sitting on stoops, or hanging in the schoolyards of Kings County?  Do these sports media pundits and entertainers actually make daily excursions over the East River to decipher for themselves the ability or inability of the Brooklyn Nets to establish a prominent foothold east of Manhattan?

I'll wait ...

What they fail to realize is this isn't about taking over New York City or finding some poor soul walking down 34th Street, Central Park, or the Upper East Side wearing a black B cap.  From Fulton Street to Coney Island, this is about the 2.7 million denizens who call Brooklyn home.  Of course, Kings County has a huge population of unwavering hardcore Knicks fans.  But, please, Brooklynites are the ones wearing the Nets shirts, jerseys, hoodies, and caps in great numbers, and Brooklynites are the ones having meaningful Nets discourse on stoops, in bars, and schoolyards, far away from the bias media's ability to listen.  Therefore, the ignorant who rarely venture out continue slinging their expertise from behind the fortified walls of Fort Knickerbocker.

Throughout the last eight-plus years, numerous members of the media have completely ignored basic truths.  The Nets, since the first shovel moved dirt on Groundbreaking Day for Barclays Center, have been one if not two steps ahead of the Knickerbockers in all aspects of basketball and business operations and competency.  Yet, even now, with the Nets being supremely topical these last few weeks, it seems more and more as if our area pundits continue reading off the same teleprompter like so many puppet news affiliates around the country.

Truth be told, some things never change.  Once upon a time, a general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers named Larry McPhail was hired for the explicit task of turning a profit.  He assessed his business options then took aim at the competition.  McPhail knew the Giants and Yankees owned a distinct advantage over the Dodgers because they had New York displayed across their uniforms and appealed to a broader audience.  In contrast, the Brooklyn Dodgers' notoriety in that respect was limited to the confines of the Borough's borders.  Thus McPhail decided with conviction and haste to break the longstanding agreement between the three clubs, which restricted each from broadcasting their games over radio.

The Nets are likewise at the mercy of media Knickophants because, unlike the Brooklyn Dodgers who had a major hometown newspaper outlet like the famous Brooklyn Eagle championing their cause, this Brooklyn team has no such singularly focused support.  Rather, their coverage is left up to conditioned outlets unyieldingly obedient to the native Manhattan Cagers.

What is said between opposing fan bases makes for a fair fight.  But this contingent of media who continually pump this narrative of the Brooklyn Nets being inconsequential in a Knicks town, distorted as it may be, is done with no check and no balance.

Brooklyn has always forged its own way.  

This is no different.

My son, now beyond his 20s, was also born and raised in Brooklyn:

"The only ones that are really switching over, especially now, aren't real fans.  The ones that want to root for the Nets now with Kyrie, Harden, and KD on the team, are the ones that can leap off the Brooklyn Bridge.  If none of these people cared when Deron Williams was here wasting money, don't talk to me."

#WeGoHard