Hurricane Sandy has rained all over the Nets’ long awaited opening night at Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center.
At the request of Mayor Bloomberg, the NBA today postponed the Nets much-hyped contest against the rival Knick, set for tomorrow, due to the aftereffects of the superstorm — particularly lack of mass transit.
The arena – which only has 550 onsite-parking spaces – relies heavily on 11 adjacent subway lines and the LIRR for fans to get events.
With these mass transit systems expected to still be out of service tomorrow, the decision wound up being a no brainer for officials – even though the NBA less than 24 hours earlier announced the game would go on as scheduled.
“I’m sorry about the game; I was personally going to take my daughters and [gal pal] Diana [Taylor],” Bloomberg said. “We were looking forward to it.
“It’s a great stadium, it would have been a great game, but the bottom line is there is not a lot of mass transit.
“Our police have plenty of other things to do. I know lots of fans are going to be disappointed, and the players are disappointed. You should know, the players wanted to play this, but I did talk to the NBA and asked them to cancel the game.”
The Nets will now play their regular-season opener at Barclays Center Saturday against the Toronto Raptors. The game against the Knicks will be rescheduled at a later date.
Bloomberg said the city is working with the NBA to provide extra bus service for Saturday’s game because the subways might not be back running by then.
The Knicks are still set to tip off Friday at Madison Square Garden in their home opener against the Heat.
Park Slope activist Eric McClure said he’s glad the NBA finally came to its senses and cancelled the Knicks-Nets game.
“The last thing we needed was having 18,000 basketball fans descending on Barclays Center — especially with no subway service,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do with all the demands being put on police, traffic agents and emergency personnel.”
Over the past few days, local streets near the arena have been gridlocked routinely as more people were forced to drive with mass transit options limited.
The Knicks-Nets matchup had been the hottest ticket to the Big Apple sporting event since the Yankees won the 2009 World Series.
As of Oct. 27, the average ticket price was $913, according to TiqIQ, which tracks prices on secondary markets like StubHub. That’s nearly seven times higher than what an average Nets ticket at face value runs, $132.
But following the hurricane, secondary market prices dropped on average to $720 hours before the contest was cancelled.