BasketballRegional Sports

Nets wear black hat well

Photo via cbssports.com

I hate the Los Angeles Lakers, and I found myself rooting for them on Thursday night.

They played the Brooklyn Nets on TNT. Of course, they lost 109-98 to the Nets at Staples Center Thursday night with a caveat that Anthony Davis (right calf strain injury) and Dennis Schroder (COVID-19 precaution) did not play.

Just my luck that I root for a team to hate just to lose.

It says something about the Nets that I would rather root for the Lakers than them. Heck, I would rather root for James Dolan’s Knicks before I root for this Nets version. I would embrace the Heat with LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade than these Nets. You get the picture now.

I am not hiding my bias obviously. I know journalists should not be biased. I don’t consider myself a journalist unless I cover Siena basketball in the New York metropolitan area for this great site, but I try not to show who I root for or against in my writings since I consider myself a professional.

This Nets team rubs me the wrong way. It’s hard to root for any of them. Kevin Durant is such an unlikeable person who hates the game of basketball. Kyrie Irving is just a bad guy in general. James Harden destroyed the Houston Rockets altogether by dictating his departure to the Nets, and he blames the Rockets for making this situation worse by keeping him when they should have traded him. I admit I get angry just talking about them. They ruined my love of the NBA.

These Nets players act like they are entitled. They have no respect for the game. They feel the game owes them, not the other way around. How can anyone root for these guys? It’s not an accident the Nets struggle to gain ground with New Yorkers or the American public.

I moonlight as a writer for New York Sports Nation. I used to write op-ed columns on the Nets for that site, but I decided to quit because I simply could not root for these guys and bring myself to say nice things about them because I would sound phony. I rather stick to my principles.

The Nets bothered me ever since they announced plans to leave New Jersey in 2004. When then-Nets owner Bruce Ratner bought the Nets, he alienated fans in North Jersey right away with those intentions along with trading Kenyon Martin to the Denver Nuggets for nothing. He knew what he was doing by breaking up an entertaining team to get fans not to come. Then, he ordered his marketing people not to refer the Nets as the New Jersey Nets.

When Mikhail Prokhorov bought the Nets from Ratner, he started his nonsense by taking shots at the New York Knicks. He put a billboard at 34th Street about himself and Jay-Z being the blueprint for greatness to promote the Nets, which understandably infuriated James Dolan since the billboard was right by Madison Square Garden.

Then, he tried to build a dream team by acquiring washed-up veterans in Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to team with the surly Deron Williams. It resulted in a huge flop.

Prokhorov failed in disgrace, and he sold the Nets to Joe Tsai.

We all thought Tsai would build the team the right way, but like Prokhorov, he decided he wanted a shortcut to success right away along with trying to dethrone the Knicks as the NBA team to watch in New York. He decided to go along with signing Durant and Irving, and he approved the Harden trade.

So far, Durant, Irving and Harden are making this work and sacrificing their stats for the common good. It may work, even though I wonder how long it will last. It’s still a small sample size. Let’s see how they fare together when they face adversity. So far, they haven’t, and maybe they won’t.

We mock the Nets for being awful defensively, but to their credit, they make defensive plays down the stretch. The Nets can get by with defensive deficiencies when they have three players that boast firepower on offense.

I hate to admit this: They can win it all. They proved that in their five-game West Coast trip so far by beating the Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns and Lakers. The Nets have not lost to an elite team all season, which includes being 7-0 against the top eight Western Conference teams.

Maybe things fall apart for the Nets. That’s the beauty of sports. Nothing ever is guaranteed.

But the more I watch the Nets, the more I feel they will be unstoppable. Eventually, the New York sporting public will have to start paying attention to the Nets with the story the team is writing for themselves.

The Nets have come a long way from being a laughingstock to an NBA championship contender.

They also have come a long way from being pitied to being a villain.

Related Articles

Check Also
Close