Jan 16, 2023
We point our GPS towards the
Garden State this week, for a return to the days of pro hoops in
places like the "RAC" (Piscataway's Rutgers Athletic Center), the
"Rock" (Newark's Prudential Center), and the strangely iconic
Meadowlands - as we look back at 35 seasons of the oft-forgotten
New Jersey incarnation of NBA basketball's peripatetic Nets
franchise with sports historian Łukasz Muniowski ("Turnpike Team: A History of the New
Jersey Nets, 1977-2012").
Though replete with memorable
moments both before (as the inaugural American Basketball
Association's New Jersey Americans, and later
the twice-champion, Julius Erving-led, Nassau Coliseum-based
New York Nets) - and after (as the
thoroughly rebranded, Barclays Center-domiciled Brooklyn
Nets, since 2012) - it is the club's time as the New Jersey
Nets that stands out to fans and scribes alike as the most
colorful, bewilderingly forlorn
and oddly endearing
period of its existence.
Join us for memories of players
like Bernard "Sky B.B." King, "Super John" Williamson, Buck
Williams, Sam Bowie, Derrick Coleman, Stephon Marbury, Jason Kidd,
and Vince Carter - and a team that twice came this close
to an NBA Finals championship (2001-02; 2002-03), unwittingly
solidifying a decades-old inferiority complex that arguably
still permeates the franchise today.
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PURCHASE Łukasz Muniowski's book "Turnpike Team: A History of the New Jersey Nets, 1977-2012" in either paperback or Kindle electronic versions NOW!