The Brooklyn Nets: Gentrification's Team
Albert Samaha
Many of the basketball fans who grew up in Brooklyn cast their allegiance with the Knicks long ago. So the Nets had a smaller pool of potential supporters to begin with when the franchise moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn in 2012.
Earlier this week, the New York Times created a map showing the most popular NBA team in each zip code in America. It used Facebook likes as the metric for popularity.
Not surprisingly, the map showed that the Knicks remain the team of choice for all five boroughs (plus Long Island, Westchester County, and much of New Jersey). The Nets were the favored team in just eight of Brooklyn's 46 zip codes. A look at those zip codes, however, reveals that the Nets are indeed developing a core fan base.
One of those zip codes, Canarsie, had a virtual split between the Nets and Knicks: each team won 21 percent of the votes.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/05/map_shows_limited_brooklyn_nets_fandom_nyc.php