THE CITY SHAME

Ineptitude of Knicks, Nets stunts chance for rivalry

T HE KNICKS visit the Nets on Wednesday night at Barclays Center, and if you didn’t have that game circled on your calendar … well, it’s hard to blame you. The Knicks are a tire fire, the Nets a dumpster fire. The Knicks are hapless, the Nets hopeless. None of those things makes for a particularly effective marketing campaign.

It was supposed to be better than this by now, wasn’t it? Remember when the Nets first moved to Brooklyn, those heady first few months when Mikhail Prokhorov would alternate between tweaking James Dolan and the Knicks and building expectations for his own team?

Remember the ad he did with Jay Z? Remember his opening press conference when he said, “I come in peace, America,” proving he has a sense of humor? Most notably, remember the trash talk he brought with him when he officially entered his team in what was supposed to be a city rivalry centering on the city game?

“Excuse me, what is the name?” he asked on SNY back then. “Ah, oh, Knicks. Yes, I’ve heard about this second team in New York. … I think we’re getting to where we will have an epic rivalry. It will be great for the fans, for the basketball. I think, really, the coming of the arena and team to Brooklyn, we can put finally put New York on the map. It’s about time.” It was fun stuff. But, man, talk about overpromising and under-delivering.

That is both teams’ fault, of course. It was in the very first season they shared the city, 2012-13, that we got a wee taste of what could be — when the Knicks were 54-28 and Atlantic Division champs and the Nets chased them most of the year before settling for fourth place in the East and a 49-33 mark.

Both teams made the playoffs that year, the Knicks advancing to the second round before falling to the Pacers in six, the Nets getting knocked off by the Joakim Noah-led Bulls, dropping Game 7 at home. The four games the teams played that year were entertaining — a win and a loss for both teams in both arenas — even if there were far more Knicks fans invading Barclays Center than there were Nets fans able to secure seats at the Garden.

And then … Meh. The Nets won a playoff series the next year, winning Game 7 in Toronto, the high-water mark of their time in Brooklyn. They still barely registered a dent on the local radar, the first step of the Knicks’ most recent implosion getting most of the attention. And the past three years have been … Well, they’ve been epic in their awfulness. And that’s a shame, because this really should be the one intramural rivalry in New York City that truly matters, that truly feels like it ought to be bigger than any rivalry we have with other cities and other teams. The Mets and Yankees play every year — sometimes four times, sometimes six — but for now and for the foreseeable future, they play in different leagues and therefore whatever genuine stakes are on the table when they play are artificial at best and non-existent at worst. Same with the Jets and Giants, who play once every four years but reside in different conferences. That means losing to the Giants never will be as costly to the Jets as losing to, say, the Bills, and beating the Jets never will be as important to the Giants as beating the Redskins. The hockey teams hate each other, and their fans do, too. But the present ridiculous standings set-up in the NHL has seemed to minimize not only the rivalries but also the possibility they’ll meet in the playoffs as often as they used to. Which is a shame. No, the Knicks and the Nets play in the same division, play each other four times a year, and play a sport vitally ingrained in the city’s fabric. That first year was a tease, a taunt, a brief preview of what could be. The past four have mostly been a reminder that you should be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.