KNICKS/NETS AND NYC

The NBA season hasn’t even started yet, in fact neither has training camp, yet the two teams form New York city are at it! This makes for a wonderful rivalry, as the Nets try to establish their brand in Brooklyn.

Relocating the Nets to Brooklyn will really make it a true NY rivalry as strong as the Yankees/Mets, Giants/Jets and Rangers/Islanders. This is New York, and this is what the sport of basketball needs.

It doesn’t hurt that the new boss Mikhail Prokhorov is publicly challenging James Dolan tfor the supremacy of the city, but now even the Net players will do it also. Rather than look at this as being big mouthed or obnoxious, think of the Nets ploy as being a good marketing move for the team. It makes sense since the Nets have been in and out of NY like an Amtrak train form Boston to Philadelphia.

Mikhail Prokhorov has been tweaking the Knicks since he erected that billboard across the way form Madison Square Garden. It is just the thing that makes the hated James Dolan take notice and start making smart decisions for a change. Letting Lin go, the hiring of Isaiah Thomas fiasco, the firing of Mike D’Antonio and Donnie Walsh, the interference with the New York Jets building a stadium in Manhattan, and some of the very questionable player decisions he has made through the course of his stewardship.

Unlike the Mets/Yankees and Jets/Giants, the Nets/Knicks will be a rivalry a little like the old Brooklyn Dodgers/New York Giants days of the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, in that they will play each other a number of times through the course of the season. How innovative the Nets are and how well they play on the hardwood should prove interesting and exciting.

The most ink the two teams will get is who they go after in the free agency market and for how much and who they steal form each other. The 6’8” Russian Prokhorov has the money to compete, being a billionaire.

That’s all I wrote, folks!