Infinite Nets Game 1: Starved For Attention

Let’s do this at the height of our intelligence.

I don’t come here to drag the Brooklyn Nets. I come in the name of creating content, and to do so I require a gimmick. For too long have I been freelancing without my very own safety net, so in this home of Battlebots and Aussie Rules Footie and Canadian Apology Ball, I have decided to cover one of the most obscure teams in professional sports. A team that plays two blocks away from my apartment, that I know absolutely nothing about.

Should be great.

Let’s be clear, I have no intentions of stumbling into the pitfalls of modern-day sports bloggery. With the inception of the internet, the first generation of bloggers decided to use the web as their own personal daily meditation on rage and hostility. A cathartic scratch that offered no relief. It would be easy to the point of cynicism for me to come here 82 times piloted by the This Team is Shit ethos. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. And on the other hand, I also want to steer clear of equally grating second generation of blogging. I’m talking about the plastic coated Everybody is Great and Sports are Always Fun hyperbolic yapping that makes the writer sound like some anthropomorphized Golden Retriever. I have no use for takes that begin and end with Caris LeVert is Just So Much Fun, You Guys!!! even though Caris LeVert is a pretty fun 24-year-old who you may hear a lot more about as the season goes on.

Instead I will simply comment on the truth as I see it. And the truth is, I have no idea what the hell these Nets are, so it’d be stupid for me to pretend to know if they are going to turn some heads, or if they will toss the season in the dumpster and tank for Zion now that they have their own first round pick. Personally, I would like they to play, as I am philosophically opposed to punting on entire seasons, but they might. Instead, I will simply watch and observe, and gaze deep into my own naval to fill space where little can otherwise be said.

Of course, as the season drew closer, the universe conspired to sabotage my attempts to actually cover this team. My mother bought me a car- yes, I am a 37-year-old who could probably handle this on my own, but I didn’t, and she wants to see her granddaughter which meant I would miss the home opener as she doesn’t have cable. And last night, my friend Vin, who wished to be referred to as “Los” in this blog, called me up out of the blue, with a request to hang out. I agreed, but had to venture back into Manhattan, where the Brooklyn Nets barely exist as a concept, much less an actual team to be followed. We met up a block away from MSG, in the shadow of the Empire State Building lit in orange and blue to celebrate the Knicks home opener. In spite of ourselves, we found ourselves at a bar with $15 cocktails, that resembled a passable sports bar at an airport. One Bud Light later we found ourselves at Jack Doyle’s, and I found myself negotiating with a confused bartender.

“Could you put the Nets game on one of these TV’s?”

“The Knicks?”

[Ian looks around to see roughly 15 televisions broadcasting the Knicks]

“That can’t possibly be what I would be asking you for right now, can it?”

Wrap your mind around being outshone by the Knicks. Christ, we’re not talking about overcoming an institution like the Lakers here. It’s the Knicks. And yet, in my life I have met exactly zero fans of the Nets.

Maybe battling for it is how somebody becomes a fan. It’s an identity forged in effort, possibly the reason that the Americans who fall for the EPL or La Liga are now rabid devotees. They had to burn calories finding the game. The game didn’t force itself upon them as the great god Football does to all of us. It wasn’t ubiquitous. And though I have no real connection to these Nets, I found myself watching with growing interest as they ripped out to an early lead against the also bad Detroit Pistons. Jarrett Allen hit a 3 from the corner, and I realized that they’re too good to tank. LeVert scores at will. LaDriggs Jenkins catches a rebound and runs wild in transition for a nifty layup, and things look promising, but the team remains so goddamn anonymous. The name on their uniforms might as well read “VISITORS.” Their home unis could read “OPPONENTS” and I don’t think anybody would notice. Their corporate branded “Infor” patch has more personality than this team. Christ, you didn’t even question LaDriggs Jenkins, who I just made up. LaDriggs isn’t real. He doesn’t exist. I fooled you guys. You stupid sons of bitches had no idea.

I’ll stop ripping off John Oliver bits now.

Anyway the winning basketball didn’t last, for I am still yet to go through my initiation. I am almost cosmically destined to watch bad basketball as penance for suggesting that I cover the Nets for a season. And the Nets are still tasked with that hurdle that all young teams face, of learning how to win games. They lost, though they made it interesting in the end. I was able to say basketball knower things like “They need to work on their rebounding” and “Caris is definitely the best guy on their team.” Jarrett Allen sent a would be Blake Griffin dunk into hell. They’re not good, but they might not be that bad.

My friend bought the drinks. I’d offered to pay several times, but he insisted. I’ll definitely owe him a night out, but I think he felt so bad that I had decided to handcuff myself to this team that he insisted on covering my tab for the night. Maybe he knows that I am all but guaranteed to fall short of covering this team. That my flaky nature will get the best of me, and I will bury the Nets into the recesses of my memory by Thanksgiving. Full disclosure: The original premise of this was to watch the Brooklyn Nets while reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, but long story short, I cheated and spent the past two months reading IJ, only to discover that I’m not about to climb that particular mountain. I tapped out at page 229 of a thousand plus page tome, understanding my limits, and knowing that even if I pressed onward, I was only going to focus on how little I enjoyed reading such a gratuitous novel. I’ll stop there, because there’s nothing more gratuitous than me writing about how little I cared for a book, but I wanted to acknowledge how dubious my prospects at finishing this season are.

I am not a serious man. I’m a middle-aged dad in the inner city suburbs of Manhattan. It’s a gentrified and whitewashed community built upon the ashes of an unappreciated culture garnished with violence, where the rents are too high to pretend that I actually belong. I’m an office drone who has accepted compromise after a misspent youth of insisting that I would live along the edge with the people too cool to blog. I’m not a super fan of sports or novels, and hey, maybe I’m a poseur in some regards, but I’ll try my best to make a serious effort. So for all of you who have been recommended to this place from the various porn sites I say hello. I hope you’ll stick with me as I try to figure out what I’m going to do with this blog. At any rate I will try to be less gratuitous.

The Brooklyn Nets are 0-1, and sit in a six way tie for last place in the Eastern Conference.