The newly minted Brooklyn Nets slam-dunked their first local TV appearance.
Monday night’s preseason game against the Washington Wizards at Barclays arena — the first professional sports game in Brooklyn since 1957 — averaged 90,000 viewers on YES, the network’s highest-rated, most-watched preseason Nets game ever.
It also doubled what the team averaged on YES in its lone preseason game last season.
Monday night’s game pulled in a 1.02 household rating, which was YES’s highest-rated Nets telecast, for a non-Knicks game, in over four years (and that includes the regular season).
Even more impressive was that the 90,000 viewers for Monday night’s game more-than-doubled what the Nets averaged for their regular-season games last season on YES (39,000 viewers), when the team was playing its home games in Newark, NJ.
And the Nets gave their fans something to cheer about, beating the Wizards 98-88 in the new arena on Atlantic Avenue.
Monday night’s game was the first professional sports contest held in Brooklyn since the Dodgers abandoned the borough and moved to LA.
The next preseason Nets game airs Friday on YES; their regular-season opener versus the Knicks airs Nov. 1 on TNT.