Fifteen days. That’s all it has been. Fifteen days ago it seemed — and sounded — like we were staring at a genuine basketball revolution. It seemed — and sounded — like we had officially rebranded ourselves a two-team town, that the Nets and Knicks were on even footing, co-stars in the refurbished City Game.
Fifteen days later, we see a different landscape. We see the Knicks, suddenly reformulated as NBA darlings, safely ensconced in first place, six wins in the seven games since their last trip to Brooklyn. We see the Nets, hobbled (though not as hobbled as the Knicks), enter the night having lost four straight.
Suddenly, Part Two of this four-chapter passion play feels less a battle for the hearts and minds of the city’s basketball fans and far more an opportunity for both teams to make important statements: For the Nets, to calm worry that their recent dreadful play is anything but a speed-bump aberration, that they’ll be fine, no hassle, no worry. And for the Knicks, a simple two-part message:
This is our division.
This is our town.
Until further notice. No matter what Jay-Z might say.
When last we saw these warring basketball factions on the same floor the Nets were crowing about an overtime victory and their ascendant placement atop the Atlantic Division and the Knicks were answering questions about whether their fast start was a past-tense phenomenon, an quirk of timing and circumstance.
That night 15 days ago and that outcome — an occasionally ugly but often entertaining 96-89 overtime win for the Nets — seemed to strengthen the narrative that had arisen around this nascent inter-borough rivalry: The Nets had arrived, they had fired a Fort Sumter-level warning shot across the Manhattan Bridge.
The two teams left Barclays Center that night tied for first place and the Nets kept blazing two nights later, walking into Boston and slapping around the Celtics. It’s hard to say how these things work in the minds of voters, but it wasn’t long after that Nets coach Avery Johnson was named Eastern Conference coach of the month, edging out Knicks coach Mike Woodson, both teams sitting at 11-4 as November bled into December.
A funny thing has happened since then.
The Nets stopped winning. Literally. Eleven and four has become 11-8 in an eye blink, and while its true the Nets’ struggles have coincided nicely with the absence of Brook Lopez and his most recent foot problems (with two of the losses coming against last year’s Finalists, the Heat and the Thunder), it’s also true they have played consecutive lousy games at home against the Warriors and Bucks, teams they should be able to beat in Brooklyn even with a couple of pieces gone.
Barclays ought to be another fascinating culture study tonight. Back on Nov. 26, though most generously broke the crowd down as 60-40 Nets, it was really more a 50-50 split, though that was still a tremendous upgrade for the Nets from the old Jersey quotas. Still, Nets fans in the house delighted in the win, shrugged off (rightfully) the laments of their Knicks neighbors that Jason Kidd didn’t play (to say nothing about Amar’e Stoudemire and Iman Shumpert). No Nets fan was more giddy than the team’s most famous shareholder.
“The city,” Jay-Z tweeted, “is under new management.”
Fifteen days later, it certainly feels like the old administration has re-taken the deed, reclaimed control, resumed its position as Big Brother. These things can change, and quickly, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt the Nets to close out the Brooklyn portion of this four-game regular-season series with another reminder they aren’t in North Jersey any longer.
“These guys are now 0-1 to us,” Johnson said yesterday. “They’re going to try to come in and even it, just like we’ve talked about the same thing to other teams.”
Even, as in the scoreboard. As the past 15 days have shown, it’ll take more than one night’s work to truly gain even footing. It takes time to install new management.