The balance of power has shifted, from Madison Square Garden to Barclays Center, when it comes to the local basketball scene.
At least that’s the way Barclays Center CEO Brett Yormark sees it, after the arena officially announced it will host the ACC Tournament in 2017 and 2018. The powerhouse conference will include former Big East programs Syracuse, Louisville, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh in addition to conference mainstays Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State at the same time the new Big East plays its tournament at the Garden.
“[The ACC is] by far the premier tournament. There’s a paradigm shift going on in the marketplace,” Yormark said. “I truly believe we made a pretty sizeable statement today as it relates to our interest in basketball in general and building basketball in Brooklyn, specifically at the Barclays Center.”
Yormark said Barclays Center is in talks with the NCAA to host a regional or sub-regional round in the coming years. It also now houses the Jordan Brand Classic, one of the premier high school all-star games in the country every April, and it held the PSAL boys and girls basketball city championship games in early March.
“We’ve become the go-to place for basketball in this marketplace, and I don’t think it gets better than the ACC basketball tournament,” Yormark said.
The Atlantic 10, which moved its tournament to Barclays in 2013 and played there this March also, will return to Brooklyn in 2019, 2020 and 2021. The plan, if all goes well, will be for a rotation between the two leagues’ postseason tournaments, Yormark said.
Yormark said Barclays Center was also in discussions with the Big Ten, but felt the ACC, because of its new additions, made more sense.
As part of the deal, the ACC and Atlantic 10 agreed to play an inter-conference doubleheader at Barclays the next three years, and Atlantic 10 teams will be part of the Barclays’ annual Brooklyn Hoops non-conference showcases.
“It’s the media capital of the world and we want our brand in this city, in this facility, in Brooklyn,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said.
Big East commissioner Val Ackerman told The Post at an event at the Garden to promote the NCAA Tournament’s East regional the ACC moving its tournament to New York City doesn’t necessarily infringe on the Big East’s product.
“I think very little [of it],” she said. “We’ve been here for a long time and we have a long-term relationship with the Garden. It makes sense to me that the ACC, given their current member composition, would want to rotate through New York periodically — it seems like that’s what they’ve elected to do, while keeping their bases in the South, so that makes sense.”
—Additional reporting by John DeMarzo