Slowly but surely, we are getting there.
The purchase of the Fort Wayne Mad Ants by the Indiana Pacers this summer appears to have sparked other NBA clubs without a D-League affiliate to throw their names in the ring. Earlier today, Tim Bontemps of the New York Post reported that Brooklyn Nets CEO Brett Yormack has announced the Nets will have a D-League affiliate starting next season.
Brett Yormark let the cat out of the bag today, but sources say the Nets will have a D-League team again beginning next season.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) November 5, 2015
The team will play next season at Barclays Center, and then will play at Nassau Coliseum beginning in the 2017-18 season.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) November 5, 2015
One interesting note is that the team will play their inaugural season in the Barclays Center, which is both extremely convenient and a scheduling nightmare. The following season the team will move to the Nassau Coliseum, which is located in Uniondale, New York and has capacity for 17,260 fans. For comparison, the Iowa Energy (affiliate of the Memphis Grizzlies) play in front of 16,110 fans at the Wells Fargo Arena — the Energy were third in the league for attendance per game at 4,071 last season.
This isn’t the Nets’ first rodeo when it comes to the D-League. There were originally affiliated with the Roanoke Dazzle — what a freakin’ name! — and more recently, the Springfield Armor up until 2014. The Dazzle folded and the Armor are now the Grand Rapids Drive, affiliated with the Detroit Pistons.
The addition of the Nets’ D-League franchise will make three expansion teams for the 2016-17 season to date, with the Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls being the other two. The league is well on it’s way to having 30 teams, as they have envisioned for quite some time.
Last season, the Nets utilized the flex assignment rule to send Markel Brown and Cory Jefferson to the Maine Red Claws. With shared affiliations being far from ideal for either party, though, Brown only played one game and Jefferson played in two.