NEW JERSEY NETS

New Jersey Nets

The New Jersey Nets is a professional basketball team that competes in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and plays in the Eastern Conference’s Atlantic Division. The team is currently based in East Rutherford, New Jersey and is scheduled to be relocated to the borough of Brooklyn in New York City for the upcoming 2010-2011 season. The Nets play their home games at Izod Center, which is formerly known as Bren Byne Arena and later, Continental Airlines Arena. The arena is also home to the New Jersey Devils of the NHL. The Nets will be leaving the arena upon completion of the newly constructed Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The team also verified that they will be called the Brooklyn Nets, and that there might be a logo and color change.

In 1967, the franchise was first established as part of the American Basketball Association (ABA) with trucking magnate Arthur Brown as the owner. The team was originally known as the New York Americans, and Brown intended for it to play at the 69th Regiment Armory on Manhattan's east side, but pressure from the New York Knicks forced the Armory to back out three months before opening day. They eventually changed their name to the Nets to rhyme with the baseball New York Mets and the football New York Jets teams that also played in the Long Island area at the time. Then, the Nets moved into the NBA in 1976, and have been selling out their home arena year after year. The acquisition of Jason Kidd and Vince Carter made the Nets to the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003, and has made it to the playoffs every year since then, making this team one of the perennial favorites to get to the Eastern Conference Finals. The Nets were one of four ABA teams to join the NBA.

The Nets were currently located in New York at this time, but where moved back to Jersey after the Knicks forced them to pay $4.8 million for "invading" their NBA territory. In their first four years in New Jersey, the team managed to have four straight losing seasons. There were speculations if team owner Bruce Ratner would continue to own the team if the Nets ultimately do not move to Brooklyn, since the arena project was the main reason he bought the team. Alternative possibilities discussed in the past include the Nets playing their home games at Madison Square Garden or returning to Long Island to share a new or refurbished arena with the New York Islanders.

The New Jersey Nets is currently televised by their home television network the Yes Network, which the team joined after the merger of the operations of the Yankees and and Nets (under the corporation banner YankeeNets). The Nets have stayed on YES despite the dissolution of YankeeNets and Bruce Ratner's purchase of the team. Prior to the Nets' TV home was Fox Sports Net New York and Sports Channel New York.

For more information please visit: www.nba.com/nets/

Long Island Sports