Fans of NY presents: Jaime Cobham’s Nets Fandom
My Nets fandom started in 2011, when the team announced they were going to move [from Jersey] to Brooklyn, not far from my house. I had just started playing pickup at a couple courts in the city, so my dedication to basketball grew quickly. There is a picture of Jay-Z, my favorite rapper, at the groundbreaking for Barclays Center wearing a pitch black 3-piece suit. In a way only Jay-Z could, he had his hard hat tipping harder than the Big Dipper with a scowl that could strike fear into the hearts of the blind. In that moment, I knew the Nets would break my heart one day.
When we started trading draft picks for geriatric patients [with the Boston Celtics] just before I left for college, I was concerned but decided to let things play out before I cast judgement. When Paul Pierce got a series winning block to push us past the Toronto Raptors, I lost my shit in the basement of a freshman dorm while my friends and I hunkered down in for the playoffs. For a brief moment in the sun, I thought the unnecessarily expedited timeline of a Russian oligarch [and Nets owner at the time], Mikhail Prokhorov, may have pushed us ass backwards into a winning team. And when it all fell apart, I thought it might have been worth the gamble.
And then, the Celtics used their assets to build a sustainable franchise of the future. Every bucket from Jayson Tatum feels like a dagger to the heart. Watching Jaylen Brown lead on and off the court only makes me wonder what he would’ve done with the platform Brooklyn would’ve given him. I haven’t cried myself to sleep just yet, but when the Celtics inevitably go on a championship run, I can’t rule out the possibility of it happening.
Being a Nets fan takes a lot of heart. Knicks fans have been through hell during my lifetime [born 1995], they have almost always been bad and their best highlight was a couple of weeks in the middle of the year when a Harvard Grad took over the city (Editor’s note: Ironically, Linsanity kicked off against the New Jersey Nets).
The Nets don’t get that kind of attention — whether we like to admit it or not — we are perceived as the younger brother franchise. Sometime soon, when we climb the mountain and win a championship, I hope we start to get the respect we deserve as the superior franchise in New York. Until then, there will be a chip firmly placed on our collective shoulder and admittedly, I kinda like it being there.