Brooklyn Nets

The Brooklyn Nets have one of the most nomadic histories in basketball. Founded in 1967 as the New Jersey Americans of the old ABA, they lasted a single season in Teaneck before hopping across the Hudson to Long Island as the New York Nets. The name “Nets” was neat for two reasons: it rhymed with the Mets and the Jets, and it simply described the sport. On Long Island they first played at Island Garden, then Nassau Coliseum, and quickly found their stride.

Those New York years produced early glory. Led by Julius “Dr J” Erving, the Nets won ABA titles in 1974 and 1976. Then came the ABA–NBA merger and a brutal bill for “invading” the Knicks’ territory: a $4.8 million indemnity. Cash-strapped, the club sold Dr J to the Philadelphia 76ers to cover the fee. It remains one of the most painful financial decisions in basketball, and it set the franchise back for years.

In 1977 the team returned to New Jersey, a move that suited the Garden State’s long, slightly overshadowed relationship with New York — close, connected, but keen to stand on its own. The Nets bounced between the Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway and, from 1981, the Meadowlands’ arena (variously Brendan Byrne, Continental Airlines and later IZOD). They drew fans from across New Jersey and, even in the Knicks’ shadow, had flashes of real quality: the Jason Kidd era produced back-to-back NBA Finals trips in 2002 and 2003, only to run into the peak Lakers and then the Spurs.

By the 2000s, the franchise wanted a larger platform. That chance arrived with the Atlantic Yards project and a move to Brooklyn in 2012, into the new Barclays Center. The symbolism mattered. Brooklyn had once been its own city — consolidated into New York in 1898 — and had never quite lost its sense of self. It was a borough built by docks and factories along the East River, with the Navy Yard turning out ships through the Civil War and booming again in the Second World War. Waves of immigrants — Irish, Italian, Jewish, and later Caribbean and Latin American communities — shaped its streets and parishes, while Black Brooklyn produced a culture that echoed far beyond the city, from Jackie Robinson’s Dodgers at Ebbets Field to the music of Biggie Smalls. When the Dodgers left for Los Angeles in 1957, Brooklyn’s heart broke. For more than fifty years it was the biggest American city without a major-league team. The Nets’ arrival felt like a return — a modern franchise for a place that had never stopped thinking of itself as a sporting borough.

Brooklyn itself changed with the times. As manufacturing waned late in the twentieth century, the waterfront slid, then revived in the twenty-first: warehouses into studios and flats, DUMBO’s cobbles from freight yard to tech and design, Williamsburg from factories to galleries and music venues. The Barclays Center sat right on that turn — a sleek hall at the edge of brownstones and rail yards, welcomed by some, resisted by others, but undeniably a new anchor in the borough’s story of reinvention.

The brand said it all. With minority owner Jay-Z’s influence, the Nets chose stark black and white: clean, urban, pared back. Where the Knicks shouted in orange and blue, Brooklyn went monochrome — fashion-ready, concrete and steel, graffiti and galleries. The simple shield and the “B” within a basketball gave the club a look that felt both old New York and new Brooklyn: classic lines, modern intent.

On the court, the early Barclays years were uneven: big cheques, veteran rosters, and not quite enough bite. Later came the superteam gamble — Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden — a blazing idea dimmed by injuries and off-court drama. Even so, the Nets have carved out their place as the city’s other pole: a different voice to the Garden, a different rhythm of basketball in a different building, in a borough that likes doing things its own way.

And that, really, is the thread. The Brooklyn Nets are New Jersey grit and Long Island roots; Dr J’s hang-time and Jason Kidd’s orchestration; the Navy Yard’s slips and DUMBO’s studios; Dodgers heartbreak and a Barclays rebirth; Jay-Z’s eye for design and black-and-white swagger. Their badge is a plain shield with a ball and a “B” — spare, confident and unmistakably Brooklyn.