As the NBA season approaches, we sure have been hearing a lot about the New York Knicks.
But wasn’t this going to be the year we started talking about the New Jersey Nets? The team has a new owner – Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov – a solid core of young players, and a new arena on the way in Brooklyn.
The Knicks were, well, just the Knicks after blowing the LeBron James. This was supposed to be the Nets year. So what happened?
Well, for one, Amar’e happened. The Knicks failed to land the biggest name in the basketball uniform, but they managed to get another prize in the six-foot , 10-inch tall center. The Nets didn’t land anyone. Additionally, despite the promise of Jay-Z leading cheers in Brooklyn, the Nets are still mired in New Jersey.
The results: Stories about the Knicks outnumber those about the Nets almost two-to-one.
In fact, according to Google Trends, the ratio of Knicks mentions to Nets mentions is actually worse now than it has been in the past. (One point nine-to-one in the past 12 months versus 1.7-to-one historically.)
The only time the Nets significantly topped the Knicks in Google Trends during the last 12 months? December 3, 2009, the day the team fell to 0-18 and broke the NBA’s record for futility. D’oh!
