To Net Or Not To Net

As I slumped into my train seat this morning for the 1,962nd time (OK, that's an estimate, but probably very much in the ballpark), dodging the rain and the low-grade hate of all of my fellow commuters, I found a little blow-in insert from the New Jersey Nets. You know, the 12-70 team that is going to play real NBA teams at the Rock in Newark, aka the stadium that's no more than two blocks away from the place that I'm at every blessed workday.

And they are offering season tickets starting at $299. Now, those are the seats in the top of the stadium, in the corners, that are absolutely useless. But still, it means that center court up high can be yours for $11 a seat for the full season.

Which brings me back -- oh, how it brings me back -- to the first time I was a season ticket holder, for a basketball team that was nearly as bad as this one. I signed on to the late model Charles Barkley Sixers, the physical brutes (front line: Rick Mahorn, Mike Gminski and the Chuckwagon -- in other words, 800 pounds of pain) that were kind of a poor man's Buddy Ryan Eagles of basketball. I kept the seats for three years, and lo, they were not pretty. From the failed Jerry Stackhouse Era to the unbelievably awful Barkley trade to the Suns for Canine Armon Gilliam, Below Canine Tim Perry and overmatched not a point guard Jeff Hornacek... and then, finally, The Doug Moe Era, which also gave you the rookie year of the Death Stick, Shawn Bradley. I have seen and paid for bad basketball, my friends.

I was then, just as I am now, a huge Association fan. I'd go for the other team, basically, and as these games happened in the Spectrum, the seats were $10 -- just a buck less than the ones I'd get at the Rock! -- and try to find anyone that would go to the games with me. For games against Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley or other big names, I could usually get someone to go... but more often than not, especially late in the season, it was impossible, and I'd go alone or eat the ticket.

Just the same way, I suspect, as tickets to Nets games would be. They did go 12-70 last year on merit, after all, and after definitively losing the NBA lottery tonight, only have the third pick, not the first. I like Devin Harris and Brook Lopez, but if the team is building a brighter future, it will bloom in Brooklyn, which is to say, in a place that I'm highly unlikely to go to.

In the end, the whim will pass, and I'll let the seats go, because there just isn't enough money in my pocket to justify something like this. Besides, while the eldest is showing interest in hoop, it's not nearly strong enough to make for her taking unaccompanied trips to Newark and staying up late on school nights. Besides, there are just some things that you have to give up as a Dad, and blowing 20 to 41 nights a year on someone else's laundry is one of them. Sadly.