Brooklyn Nets a familiar Fandom 250 snub at this point

The Brooklyn Nets once again missed the cut in the annual FanSided Fandom 250, a ranking of fan bases across sports and entertainment. Can they ever get in?

FanSided’s annual Fandom 250 rankings are out and once again, there isn’t so much as a whisper about the Brooklyn Nets.

The list of the top 250 fan bases in sports, entertainment, celebrities and brands was released Wednesday and includes 15 professional basketball franchises, including 12 NBA fan bases and three from the WNBA.

The good news? Seventeen other fan bases missed the cut. The bad news? The Nets’ fan base was beaten out by not one, not two, but three franchises in the (unfairly) much-maligned WNBA.

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The 15 pro clubs include:

10. Philadelphia 76ers
20. Boston Celtics
39. Golden State Warriors
51. Los Angeles Lakers
62. New York Knicks
107. Houston Rockets
119. Toronto Raptors
136. Chicago Bulls
171. Minnesota Lynx (WNBA)
183. Utah Jazz
185. Portland Trail Blazers
194. Cleveland Cavaliers
202. Seattle Storm (WNBA)
212. Oklahoma City Thunder
218. Los Angeles Sparks (WNBA)

Of course, the Knicks got in. What’s not to love about a team that hasn’t played for an NBA title since the Clinton administration and hasn’t won one since Richard Nixon occupied the White House, right?

Yes, that was a subtle reminder that the Nets, while still in New Jersey, actually played in back-to-back Finals during this millennium.

The top 10, besides the Philadelphia Processors, were:

Cleveland Browns
University of Alabama
Boston Red Sox
LeBron James
Black Panther
New York Yankees
Serena Williams
Fortnite
Kansas City Chiefs

The Red Sox ahead of the Yankees. Wasn’t that listed as one of the signs of the apocalypse? Asking for a friend.

This really is an interesting list that can be debated for days, weeks, months, but in all fairness, the Nets not making the cut is neither a snub or a particularly big surprise.

So what does Brooklyn’s fan base need to do to break into the Fandom 250?

For starters, we could use more rabid fans like the Brooklyn Brigade. These are the diehards and the Nets need more of them if their fan base is to gain more respect and recognition.

It also doesn’t help that Brooklyn ranks 30th among 30 NBA clubs in average attendance this season, at 13,862 in 12 home dates thus far. That’s after finishing 29th a season ago at 15,556.

The highest the Nets have placed in attendance since coming to Brooklyn, per ESPN, was 16th in the inaugural 2012-13 season.

It’s a problem that goes back to the very beginnings of the franchise in the ABA in 1967.

History records that the Nets began play in the ABA as the New Jersey Americans, playing home games at the Teaneck Armory, in 1967-68.

The ABA wanted a team in New York and, according to this 2012 piece from Dave D’Alessandro of the Newark Star Ledger, shipping magnate Arthur Brown was prepared to deliver. His new team was going to be called the New York Freighters (in hindsight, let’s be glad this didn’t happen).

The team was going to play at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lex and 25th in Manhattan. There was one big problem, according to Brown’s son, Gordon Brown:

"“Madison Square Garden was very powerful and they didn’t want a competing team in the New York area. So they used every bit of political clout they had to not let us play. They erected barriers everywhere. Nobody would lease to us, even if they had space open.”"

After a season in New Jersey came eight seasons in the ABA and one in the NBA in various arenas across Long Island, followed by a return to New Jersey for four seasons at Rutgers before settling in at a new arena at East Rutherford from 1982-2010.

Two interim years in Newark preceded the move to Brooklyn.

Nets fans are the underdogs. We always have been and likely always will be, because no matter how bad the Knicks get, they have Manhattan, the Garden, glitz, glamor, Spike Lee and all that jazz.

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But that doesn’t mean the fan base can’t get our due some day. It all starts by showing up.