Remember, the Brooklyn Nets were supposed to have two primary purposes for the 2018-19 season:
Offer New Yorkers a cheaper basketball experience than the team that plays at Madison Square Garden.
Keep eating bloated contracts from the 2016 spending spree in exchange for draft picks they firesold in the 2013 deal with Boston. (They’re paying Allen Crabbe $18 million, Dwight Howard, who is not on the team, $18 million, and DeMarre Carroll $15 million.)
Of late, they’ve added a new wrinkle that’s been completely absent in New York over the last six years: winning.
OK, we’re going completely overboard -- Brooklyn’s 14-18 -- but they’ve won six straight, and beat the Lakers on Tuesday night at home. D’Angelo Russell hit a dagger against the franchise that gave up on him. And, also, Jarrett Allen stuffed the living hell out of LeBron James:
Is this team going to make the playoffs? Probably not. They’re in 10th place.
But they are:
Five games better than the Knicks, whose roster is ghastly unimpressive, and who likely have Kristaps Porzingis wrapped in bubble wrap in Spike Lee’s basement.
Full of interesting players.
Cheap. The next Nets game at Barclays is on Dec. 21 against the Pacers. The cheapest seats are $24 on SeatGeek. The next Knicks game at MSG is also Dec. 21 against the Hawks, and the lowest prices are $54 dollars.
Plus, at every Nets game, there are at least a few die-hards in New Jersey Vince Carter jerseys who took nine different means of public transportation to get from Central Jersey to Downtown Brooklyn and LIVE AND DIE by every meaningless play.
For all of these reasons, we are comfortable saying the Brooklyn Nets -- the ones who haven’t made the playoffs in four years and made perhaps the stupidest trade of the last 30 years in 2013 -- are New York’s team, which is more an indictment of the crippling incompetence of James Dolan and the Knicks, but still.
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