Nets hope new Brooklyn Basketball Training Center…
The Nets are about to embark on a season where the lottery is the aim and draft picks are the endgame. It’s a sensible transfer, but a onerous promote.
At least for today.
That’s half of why they’re taking part in the long sport, with younger rookies on the ground and younger followers off it.
The Nets are aiming to domesticate generational fandom.
And the latest instance of that got here this week with the long-awaited opening of the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center, proper across from Barclays Center.
For BSE Global — the dad or mum company of the Nets, Liberty and Barclays Center — this building is key to building a younger fan base.
“It’s huge,” BSE Global CEO Sam Zussman told The Post. “Then you’re a fan. Yeah, I mean, think about what made you a fan. Sometimes it’s the parents coming home, bringing a ball to someone, and all of a sudden they’re a fan of that team. It’s the smallest things. And this is super, super organic. It also pulls the parents in.”
The cold, onerous fact is the tanking Nets are going to lose video games this season, with successful the lottery a profitable outcome. They’re not changing grownup followers from the established Knicks, so they’re focusing on a different youthful demographic.
The Nets are trying to keep placing down roots in the neighborhood after shifting from New Jersey, and the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center is an instance. Located on Flatbush Ave. on the previous website of Modell’s, it’ll serve children aged 6-17 and be the hub of the bigger Brooklyn youth program that contains free training at local colleges and paid training at the middle.
BSE Global CEO Sam Zussman talks with Nets coach Jordi Fernández during his introductory press convention last 12 months Corey Sipkin / New York Post
And of course, it’ll introduce children to the Nets.
“Your kid comes, says, ‘I want to watch a Nets game’. Good luck telling him or her anything else, right?” Zussman said. “So, I think it’s a way to engage the entire family. It’s the most organic way to do it. Because this is what we do, right?”
Through their partnership with the Department of Education, the Nets offered clinics to 40,000 children last 12 months in Brooklyn. The new heart will likely be an 18,600-square-foot chunk of outreach, with Nets proprietor Joe Tsai, spouse Clara, minority proprietor David Koch Jr. and others on hand for Thursday’s ribbon cutting.
“One of the greatest barriers to success is access,” Brooklyn Deputy Borough President Kim Council said at the ribbon cutting. “Our children need to see and they need to be able to visualize themselves in certain spaces. So I’m incredibly thankful to Joe and Clara Tsai for their investment, not just in this facility but in Brooklyn and the larger community.”
BSE Global has additional development plans for the world. Even if the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center strikes to a larger location, say, three years from now, the plan is it’ll grow the best way the Nets hope the younger fan base grows.
In a approach, they hope the rebuilding group mirrors that.
The Nets made an NBA-record 5 first-round picks in June. While it was powerful for followers to really buy into last season’s 26-56 roster stuffed with gamers who had been mere placeholders, this season they will invest in a group of younger rookies who will grow up before their eyes over the next few years in Brooklyn.
“We started this dream years ago. We had Kyrie (Irving) and Kevin Durant,” Zussman told the Post. “What I’d say is, you’re right in the fact that the team now is probably more relatable to someone young, right? Because they see ‘Oh my God, they have 18-, 19-year-old players and they’ll grow up here.’ ”
After the Nets had contact five-on-five on the first two days of camp, Friday was a non-contact recovery day.
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