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Brooklyn Nets Players Dodging Brooklyn
So the NY Times decides to take an in-depth look at where the Brooklyn Nets players will be living, but has yet to take a deep investigative look into the far more important matter of Ratner and the government's failure to deliver a single unit of "affordable" housing (2,250 were promised) or the puny percentage of the 10,000 "permanent jobs" promised.
Anyway, the article is illustrated with yet another free ad placement for the Nets (a photo of a Nets billboard) and accompanied by an oh-so-fluffy article pondering oh where oh where would be a good overpriced condo for a Nets player to live in Brooklyn.
As of now no Nets are living in Brooklyn as their practice facility remains in New Jersey and the commute, apparently, would be annoying. What's it going to be like for the Jersey fans to commute do the same commute? Remember, the new city and state revenue projections were dependent upon a large percentage of Jersey fans coming to Brooklyn. Fans, of course, would have to pay for the pleasure of that commute, whereas the players would be paid to deal with it.
Perhaps there are other reasons, such as Manhattan still having special cachet. Or still other reasons as reported in the article:
Even the convenience of a Brooklyn practice site might not turn every Net into a Brooklynite. Some players will be drawn to the borough's electricity. Others not so much.
"I'm afraid of the city," forward Gerald Wallace flatly admitted in July. He grew up in tiny Childersburg, Ala. (population: 5,100) and found a home in Clifton, N.J., a solid 22 miles from the Nets' new arena.
"Hopefully," Wallace said, "I can find a driver to take me back and forth."
It's important to remember that the Brooklyn Nets, according to Ratner, Yormark and especially the boy who cried when the Dodgers left, Marty Markowitz, are supposed to be the second coming of the Dodgers who will fill that hole that made Marty cry. But they won't ever be that, and we just have to look at a Times article from 2011 about Duke Snider's residence to know that pro sports and pro athletes ain't what they used to be:
Florence Cozzolino remembers the man who used to live down the street from her at 178 Marine Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. She and other children from the neighborhood would gather outside his house, waiting for him to return home so they could ask for his autograph.
Her neighbor was not an actor. He was another sort of Brooklyn celebrity: He was a Dodger.
Mrs. Cozzolino lived a few houses down from Duke Snider, the Brooklyn Dodgers' center fielder who died on Sunday at the age of 84. These days, no one brags about living next door to professional baseball players, because the only people who can afford to live next to them have too much money to brag about that sort of thing. But in the 1950s in Bay Ridge, Dodgers fans lived next door to Dodgers players.
Mr. Snider and a few of his teammates who lived in the neighborhood — like Pee Wee Reese or Carl Erskine — would car-pool together to their home games at Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds, where their National League rivals, the New York Giants, played. Mr. Snider used to go to his neighbor Gus Barwood's block parties in the summer, used to greet the children and teenagers waiting for him outside 178 Marine Avenue after a game.
"He would always tell us to keep out of trouble," said Mrs. Cozzolino, 69, a retired public school teacher who has lived in a house on 97th Street all her life. "We just got used to it. A friend of mine used to walk Pee Wee Reese's daughter to school. They were so unpretentious. They really were. Baseball was different then. They weren't playing for the multimillions."
... Maybe Gerald Wallace can forego the driver and he and his teammates can car-pool together from Manhattan to Brooklyn.
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Norman Oder takes The Times to task on its multi-reporter articles on the Nets' living quarters, and NoLandGrab points out, "The Times loves nothing more than its development partner's basketball arena, hollow Brooklyn-themed 'trend' pieces, and a chance to mention the Park Slope Food Coop. And wrapping them all in one package? Better than winning a Pulitzer!" Oder writes:OMG, where will the Nets players live? Times devotes two articles, six reporters, to investigation, promotion
In a Sports section front-page story (B7) headlined Nets Will Play in Brooklyn but Will Practice and Live Outside Borough, the New York Times relies on five reporters to explore the vital conundrum, as expressed in the article's closing paragraph:
Brooklyn seems ready to adopt the Nets. It may be a while before the Nets adopt Brooklyn.
Of course the "ready to adopt" is evidenced, in the main, by the team's extensive advertising campaign--and the Times's promotion, in two articles covering at least 1.6 pages today (and nearly 3 pages a few weeks back).
...
Posted: 9.04.12
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