Nets have first-class plan for success

Since selling Julius Erving to the 76ers in 1976 and moving to New Jersey in 1977, the Nets have been plagued by a string of bad luck.

The Nets have had two No. 1 overall draft picks since joining the NBA. One was forward Derrick Coleman, who never became a star, and one was Kenyon Martin, a star whom they traded after four seasons because they could no longer afford him. There also have been many bad trades, including a deal that sent Bernard King to Utah.

Tragic events include Micheal Ray Richardson's lifetime ban from the NBA for substance abuse, an auto accident that killed star guard Drazen Petrovic and the saga of Jayson Williams, who broke his leg in April 1999 only a few months after signing a six-year, $86-million contract. A few months later, he retired. Williams is serving a prison sentence for the shooting of a limousine driver.

The bizarre events include Larry Brown quitting with two weeks left in the 1982-83 season to take the Kansas coaching job. A few months after winning the national title at Villanova in 1985, Rollie Massimino backed out of a deal to coach the Nets only hours before the news conference to announce his hiring.

Now one of the NBA's most beleaguered franchises is a year away from moving back to New York. The team has an expensive new arena under construction, a billionaire new owner and a talented new point guard. It also may have a new image: After 35 years of wandering the New Jersey wilderness, the Nets may be on the precipice of escaping The Curse of Dr. J.

Erving, sold to the 76ers after a contract dispute with then-Nets owner Roy Boe, believes the sky is the limit for the organization with its move to Brooklyn next season.

"I love what they are doing," he said in a phone interview last week. "Brooklyn is a great place to have a team and they have an owner who has the ambition to win a championship. He is determined to make his team first-class."

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But it will take more than a nod from Dr. J to release the curse, free the Nets from decades of bizarro bad luck and win over the legions of new fans they are hoping to attract to Barclays Center in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights next season.

A good team, of course, would help. And the Nets have a shot at having a very good one if they can lure Orlando soon-to-be-free-agent center Dwight Howard to play alongside point guard Deron Williams in Brooklyn.

But with Williams also due to enter the free-agent market this summer, the Nets know they can't bank on marquee names to be a big-time drawing card. Instead, they are banking on a marquee city. While playing one final season in New Jersey, the team has launched a massive rebranding campaign centered upon what it considers to be its biggest star: Brooklyn.

"The only thing that's going to be similar is the name 'the Nets,' " said Brett Yormark, CEO of the Nets and Barclays Center. "It's about 16 miles from the Prudential Center, but that 16 miles is a truly transformational move."

And a complicated one. The building of Barclays Center was wrought with controversy as several community groups, most famously "Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn," mounted a significant community challenge that landed in the courts and delayed the Nets' move by years.

Minority owner Jay-Z may lend a cool factor to the new situation, but some observers believe the team needs to be a little less obvious and commercial.

"Brooklyn needs to believe that the team cares about the community," said Adam Hanft, a New York-based brand strategy consultant. "Brooklyn is a unique eco-system. It's not enough to say, 'Come to Brooklyn. It's cool.' They have to support the right kind of causes. Jay-Z is fine, but everyone knows he's an entrepreneur. They have to be a little more organic so people can connect with the team."

Among Hanft's suggestions for making the team "more Brooklyn" was tapping into the farm-to-table movement with concessions that feature locally produced or artisanal food, sponsoring a bike-sharing program and selling merchandise at small, independent stores.

The Nets are rolling out an extensive marketing campaign early next year that will center upon Brooklyn and feature something called Brooklyn Taste that highlights local cuisine. The team already has done some subtle marketing through community outreach on the grassroots level. Barely a week goes by without the team sending out a news release announcing an appearance by a team member in Brooklyn. The Nets have refurbished a playground at a school in Prospect Park, coach Avery Johnson has helped paint a community center and general manager Billy King has served Thanksgiving meals at a community center.

So far, according to Yormark, 42 percent of the Nets' season-ticket buyers are coming from Brooklyn and 25 percent are coming from Manhattan. With GQ recently having named Brooklyn "the coolest place on the planet" and owner Mikhail Prokhorov running for president in Russia, the team believes it can attract fans from all over the world and shake its reputation as the area's stepchild NBA team.

Dr. J, for one, would like to see the Nets do that.

"I will always have a great love for the Nets," Erving said. "That was probably the most pivotal time in my basketball career. I love the fact they are going to Brooklyn because I think they can do something big there. They have a great opportunity."

Opportunity? The Nets? Perhaps the curse is gone after all.