Hired To Be Fired

I’ll never forget when I knew Trey Hillman was about to be fired. I was sitting next to him on the dais in the media interview room in the bowels of Kauffman Stadium.  In my role as the Kansas City Royals reporter for their flagship radio station, I got to ask Hillman, the Royals manager, the first three questions during his post-game press conference before heading upstairs to host my Royals post-game call-in show. The Royals had lost another game in which they struggled to score runs and their bullpen imploded and I asked Hillman what could be done to fix the struggling offense.

“You start to think about squeezing in the first inning,” Hillman said.

Things had gotten so bad, the Royals manager was talking about bunting in a run in the early innings, which almost never happens; even the most offensively-challenged or small ball-oriented teams don’t squeeze bunt that early. And, bunting early won’t get a team out of its offensive doldrums; if your team has the talent to score runs, it eventually will; if it doesn’t, it won’t. There isn’t a managerial strategy that can alter how many runs an offense scores to a significant degree. This is a man, I thought to myself, who has run out of ideas. It wasn’t long before Hillman was fired.

When you’ve covered sports long enough, it’s not hard to figure out when a manager or head coach is on the verge of resigning or being let go. Sometimes, the giveaway is the badmouthing of the leader by his players. Other times, it’s the lack of respect or attention the coach/manager gets from his superiors. But, the surest sign is public statements like Hillman’s, when it’s clear the coach or manager has no idea how to get his team out of their morass. I saw something similar over the last few months, when Kansas City Chiefs head coach Romeo Crennel was clearly a dead man walking. In his press conferences after games and during the week, Crennel didn’t seem to have many answers as to why the Chiefs, picked by many to contend in the AFC West, were on their way to a 2-14 season and the first overall pick in the NFL Draft. Crennel tried to shake things up by firing himself as defensive coordinator, by indicating that players who turned the ball over would sit out for at least a handful of plays and by making a quarterback change. None of those moves worked, mainly because the Chiefs’ problems were so embedded, they weren’t going to be fixed with a few in-season changes. The day after the season ended, the Chiefs announced that Crennel was given his walking papers.

The unfortunate thing for managers and head coaches is that, generally, they’re pawns and the problems with their roster are often out of their control. There wasn’t much Hillman could do with a roster filled with young players who weren’t ready to contribute and/or didn’t belong in the Majors, over-the-hill players and dead-end veterans. At the time, we knew the Royals were a year or two away from having talented young players from their farm system ready to help, but it seemed Hillman had already lost his way and wasn’t worth keeping around for the impending youth movement. In Crennel’s case, what was seen as a talented roster wasn’t as talented as initially thought and there was little depth. Also, Crennel had a very young team that had little-to-no experience with winning at the professional level and terrible quarterback play in a league dominated by teams with excellent quarterback play. Most Chiefs fans knew Crennel was hamstrung and, as a result, directed the majority of their ire toward general manager Scott Pioli, with whom the Chiefs also parted ways.

When a team is struggling or not playing as well as some expected, fans and media are always looking for signs that a manager or head coach is on his way out. Fans often focus on in-game coaching decisions, but rarely do those indicate anything about a manager’s fate either way. Sure, some managers or coaches are more aggressive when they think they’re on the hot seat, but some will become more conservative, playing it close to the vest in an effort to avoid making waves. And, in my experience, players don’t react to game-to-game coaching decisions in the same way fans do; when players don’t win, they’re more likely to put the blame on themselves. Of course, players will notice egregious mistakes or miscalculations in strategy but, even then, they’re more likely to blame the poor results on their poor execution. That’s especially true in baseball, where there are games every day and relatively little time is spent dissecting each an every maneuver.

Media often focus on what’s going on in the locker room or clubhouse as a way of taking the temperature of a team. But, many times, that approach bears little fruit. Off-the-record comments from players and assistant coaches are the most revealing but, on the record, there usually is very little that indicates a team’s dissatisfaction with their boss. And, even if a team doesn’t like their manager or head coach, it doesn’t always mean a manager or head coach is in trouble. Likewise, a coach or manager who is liked by the players isn’t always safe. When he led the Royals, players often chafed at Hillman’s managerial style. There seemed to be a feeling that Hillman – who had never played, coached or managed in the Major Leagues before the Royals hired him – was out to prove he knew more about baseball than anyone else. One player even told me – off the record, of course – that Hillman’s first name was Trey because he thought he was three times smarter than everyone else. A strong argument could be made that Hillman never had control of the clubhouse or the respect of the players. On the other hand, the Chiefs players seemed to love Crennel; he had an avuncular way about him and was a hard guy to dislike. Even when the Chiefs were at their worst and Crennel was at his wits end with the media or with his players, it was hard not to feel sorry for Crennel. On the flipside, I don’t ever remember media feeling sorry for Hillman, even though he was dealt a bad hand. Crennel never had success as an NFL head coach and he clearly was out of ideas when it came to trying to fix what was wrong with the Chiefs, but most of his players seemed to like and respect him.

So, how are those who cover a team – and even some media who don’t cover a team – able to figure out when a coach or manager’s time is almost up? Some of it is simply intuition and an understanding of history. But, much of it is parsing what the coach/manager is saying, or not saying, to the media. Coaches who seem to be out of ideas and/or look or act defeated on a regular basis are usually taken out of their misery sooner rather than later.

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To Catchphrase Or Not To Catchphrase

I go through stages where I only listen to a specific music genre or musical artist for a few days. During this particular period, I was listening to a lot of old-school rap from the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of my favorite groups from that era is A Tribe Called Quest, a trio of rappers from Queens, New York who were adept at combining sounds unique to rap with superb wordplay. At the moment, “Can I Kick It?”, a Tribe song held in place by guitar chords borrowed from Lou Reed’s classic rock hit “Walk on the Wild Side”, was playing. In the song’s chorus, Tribe asks “Can I kick it?”, with the audience responding “Yes you can!” over and over again.

Then it hit me. I can use that.

I was in the middle of my first – and, as it turned out, only – season as the radio voice of The College of St. Rose men’s and women’s basketball teams. St. Rose’s women’s team had a two-guard whose primary job was to come off the bench and fire three-point shots. Like most long-range shooters, it was apparent within one or two shot attempts whether she was hot or cold. And, when she was hot, even the rare threes that missed looked like they were going in. One night, she came in and hit her first two threes and I knew she was on. So, when her next three went up, I saw my opportunity.

“Can she hit it?” I asked my listeners and the basketball floated through the air.

“Yes she can!” I exclaimed as the ball snapped through the bottom of the net with ruthless precision.

And, just like that, I’d come up with another way to describe a three-point shot.

Catchphrases in broadcasting can be a dangerous thing. Often, for something to truly become a catchphrase, a broadcaster has to use it over and over again in the same situation, which can become paralyzing and a threat to a broadcaster’s creativity. I see “Can he/she hit it…Yes he/she can!” more as an option than a catchphrase because I don’t use it on every three-point shot attempt; I don’t think I’ve ever used it more than once in a game broadcast and I’ll often go several games without using it at all. I feel that something like “Can he/she hit it…Yes he/she can!” has to be used sparingly, if at all. And, it works well only if the shot goes in; “Can he/she hit it…Nope” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

When I got my first play-by-play job, calling minor league baseball, I had six months to prepare before I called my first game. A good portion of that six months was spent trying to come up with a catchphrase for home runs. Every baseball broadcaster has a home run catchphrase, I thought, so I should too. I finally settled on “Forget it!”; I can emphasize the “r” even more on bigger home runs, I thought to myself. I spent countless hours going over that home run call in my head and aloud.

Then, the season started. And, I barely used the home run catchphrase I’d spent months perfecting. There were two main reasons for that. For one, I was overwhelmed, particularly at the start of the season, and I focused more energy on getting the nuts and bolts of baseball play-by-play correct and less on catchphrases. And, I realized my best calls – of home runs or of anything else – came when I just reacted and described what I saw. Play-by-play is hard enough, I reasoned, and I don’t need to make it even harder by trying to force specific catchphrases or expressions into my vernacular.

Even though I don’t focus on catchphrases in my play-by-play, I still spend a lot of time trying to come up with different words and phrases I can use on the air, but I do that as a way of preventing my play-by-play description from becoming stale. For example, last month I realized I was using “puts up” too often when describing an outside shot attempt (e.g. “Phillips puts up a three”). So, I focused on using other words to describe the act of shooting a jumper, paying close attention to the words used by other broadcasters when they described similar plays. It didn’t take me long to reduce my penchant for “puts up”.

However, some words and phrases work well, even if they’re repeated over and over. Perhaps the best example of that is NBA broadcaster Marv Albert’s “Yes!” call after made jump shots. Albert says “Yes!” after a healthy portion of successful outside shots in almost every game he’s done for at least the last four decades. However, it works for Albert because it’s simple and he varies the “Yes!” based on the importance and/or difficulty of the shot; Albert’s “Yes!” is more emphatic after a game-winner than it is after a first-quarter make. And, it never sounds like Albert is forcing “Yes!” into his call. Albert says he came up with “Yes!” as a youngster, when he heard a referee say “Yes, and it counts!” after a player made a basket despite being fouled and he and his friends started using “Yes!” in their own pickup basketball games. A broadcaster never knows when inspiration will strike.

Whenever an inexperienced or aspiring play-by-play broadcaster asks me about catchphrases and signature calls, I always tell him or her not to worry about coming up with any; let it happen organically. Instead, the focus should be on economy of words and on being able to describe the same plays in myriad ways. As broadcasters get more experience, their personality will emerge, and so will their style and any pet phrases; trying to force a style or catchphrases into play-by-play usually sounds contrived and inauthentic. I also tell broadcasters you never know when or where your favorite words or phrases will emerge. Maybe you’ll have some old-school rappers to thank.

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Is The Game On?

I had to squeeze my way through the crowd amassed near the front entrance of the Applebee’s, slipping past the harried hostess and toward the bar which, thankfully, had a handful of empty seats. I chose a chair positioned in front of an empty 22-ounce beer glass and a signed receipt. The bartender cleared the detritus and asked me what I wanted. After procuring a 22-ounce Fat Tire and a menu, I let the bartender know why I was at a bar in Brookings, South Dakota by myself on a Friday night.

“Could you turn one of these televisions to ESPN?” I said, motioning to the two televisions closest to me.

The bartender obliged, flipping the smaller of the two screens from the MAC Championship football game between Northern Illinois and Kent State on ESPN2 (who the heck would want to watch that? No one here cares about either one of those teams, I thought) to ESPN. Now, I had a half-hour to have dinner and call my wife until I could watch my beloved Syracuse Orange basketball team take on Arkansas. Like me, Syracuse was on the road.

South Dakota is the 40th state I’ve visited and, in at least a third of them, I’ve found myself at a bar or a restaurant watching one of my favorite teams. Most of those instances were like Friday’s, where I wanted to have dinner and a beer or two while watching the game. Nebraska Omaha basketball is what brought me to South Dakota; I would call their game at South Dakota State the following night and the Applebee’s was across the parking lot from our hotel. In 2004, I was in Naperville, Illinois to call early-season Division III basketball when the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers engaged in their infamous brawl that spilled into the stands. However, I never saw the melee live because I was focused on the sole television showing Syracuse pick up a key non-conference win over Memphis at Madison Square Garden. I was on pins and needles at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport one afternoon in 2007, where I watched the New York Giants lose a nip-and-tuck game to the Dallas Cowboys.

There is something comforting about watching one of my favorite teams far from my home base. My 2 ½-year-old daughter can probably relate; she brings her favorite blanket with her whenever she travels far from home. Seeing one of my teams on television while I’m on the road is like having my own favorite blanket in my possession. Most of the time, I’m the only one with a rooting interest, which is preferable to being in enemy territory. In 2009, I was at a bar in downtown Hartford, Connecticut when Syracuse beat Connecticut in six overtimes. Fortunately, the Connecticut fans weren’t too hostile when they noticed I wasn’t cheering for their team and we were all in awe as the game dragged on without a resolution. I was once at a bar in Kalamazoo, Michigan for a Giants-New England Patriots tilt when I spotted a guy in a Tom Brady jersey a few seats away. We didn’t acknowledge each other the entire game, but we tried to outdo each other with our cheers. Only after the Giants lost did we turn to each other and briefly discuss the game.

I think the bartender saw my subdued fist pump when Syracuse scored their first basket in Arkansas. Because, after that, he asked me who I was rooting for. My fist pumps continued as Syracuse continued to efficiently carve through the Arkansas press, leading to several easy baskets. I leaned back in my chair when James Southerland, Syracuse’s best shooter from long range, unleashed a three pointer from about 24 feet, not sure if it was a good shot. However, Southerland’s jumper found the bottom of the net, leading to my most emphatic fist pump of the evening. Southerland’s shooting exhibition continued, as he connected on seven three pointers in the first half. Each three seemed to be deeper than the next and the last one led to both a quiet cheer as well as a fist pump. Arkansas went on a run late in the half, trimming Syracuse’s 15-point lead to five at the intermission as I ordered my second Fat Tire.

After a bathroom break, I was back in my seat in time to see Southerland nail two more deep three pointers in the opening minutes of the second half; each three was preceded by a lean back and followed by an emphatic fist pump. I let out a “Yes!” when Syracuse point guard Michael Carter-Williams stole the ball and took it in for a layup. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see people giggling at the table to my right, but I was unconcerned. I’m happy that my team was playing well and I didn’t care if all of Brookings knew it (It certainly seemed like all of Brookings was at that Applebee’s. There were people crowded around the hostess podium all evening). Syracuse stretched their lead to 15 points once more, never trailing in the second half in a nine-point win. I paid my bill during the last television timeout, finishing my third beer as Syracuse was putting the finishing touches on their victory at the free-throw line. Of course, watching your team win is always better than watching them lose but this is even truer when you go out of your way to watch them miles from your – and their – home.

Tonight, I’ll be out of my comfort zone again, because I’ll be in Madison, Wisconsin when the Giants take the field in an important divisional game against the Washington Redskins. Since it’s a Monday Night Football game, I doubt I’ll have to coax a bartender to turn a television to it, but there’s a good chance I’ll be the only person in Madison rooting for the Giants. But, that’s okay. Especially if the Giants win.

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A Basketball Play-By-Play Education

I didn’t know exactly when the game would start, so I showed up shortly after the junior varsity contest tipped off. That’s when I noticed my broadcast position was less than ideal – on the stage behind one of the baskets. A center-court location would’ve been preferable, but I wasn’t nervous; I’d been preparing to call basketball games for quite some time and I was certain I was ready. I’d spoken briefly with Kalamazoo Christian High School’s head coach and I knew the starters. I didn’t have any statistics, but it was a high school game and the first game of the season, so I didn’t think statistics would matter much. Also, I was working with an analyst, who would help fill in the gaps.

The first few minutes of the game were a bit of a struggle, because I was still learning the players on both teams. And, it was even harder to identify the combatants when they were on the opposite end of the floor from our broadcast position. But, as the seconds ticked off of Kalamazoo Christian’s brand new purple scoreboard, I was starting to get comfortable.

Then, Kalamazoo Christian substituted.

That season, Kalamazoo Christian felt they had ten players who could start for them. Of course, you can only have half that number on the court at a given time, so they decided to break up that group of ten into a first unit and a second unit; each unit would always play together. The head coach, wary of revealing too much to someone he’d just met, didn’t tell me about these two units in our pre-game chat. If Kalamazoo Christian subbed in a more traditional fashion – one or two guys in the game here, another guy in the game there – I would’ve had an easier adjustment. Instead, five new players came in at once. Fortunately, my broadcast partner – who had been Kalamazoo Christian’s play-by-play broadcaster the previous few seasons before sliding into the analyst’s chair upon my arrival – helped me out and disaster was averted.

That game took place nine years ago this December. And, I’ve been calling basketball ever since.

Even though that game in a tiny gym with wooden, fold out bleachers in the southwest corner of Michigan was my first on-air basketball broadcast, I’d been practicing for several years. During my junior year at Syracuse University, I decided to get serious about pursuing a career in play-by-play. Syracuse is known as a play-by-play broadcaster factory but WAER, the on-campus radio station where many of those play-by-players got their start, required students to start working their way up the station’s hierarchy as freshmen before (hopefully) getting a chance to call a handful of Syracuse basketball and/or football games as upperclassmen. Play-by-play wasn’t on my radar for much of my first two years of college – I thought I wanted to be a television sports anchor – so I never considered working at WAER and, by my junior year, it was too late for me to get a chance to do play-by-play there. Instead, I purchased tickets for seats in the upper reaches of the Carrier Dome, where I would call basketball games into my tape recorder. One of the first games I remember doing was a contest against Seton Hall, which Syracuse’s Allen Griffin won with a 15-foot jumper in the closing seconds. I was disappointed when I listened back to the tape and heard how out-of-breath and raspy I sounded. My voice was very close to a yell in the final minutes of that close game and I sounded like an unabashed Syracuse fan who was calling one of their games, which is what I was.

That tape recorder continued to get a workout after I graduated from Syracuse. That first winter in the “real world” was spent in living at home in New York City, where I was either working, visiting my girlfriend in Massachusetts or doing basketball play-by-play into my tape recorder. I lived a 20-minute bus ride from Manhattan College, which had one of the best mid-major teams in the country that year and I was a frequent fixture in the top row of Manhattan’s Draddy Gymnasium bleachers, my recorder and notes in tow. Columbia University’s basketball team wasn’t nearly as good, but their campus was easy to get to via subway after work, so I often found myself calling many of their games as well. I would prep for games at work, using the team websites for statistics and player information. I would turn a manila folder into my spotting chart – a technique I learned from Dave Pasch, one of my adjunct professors in college, who doubled as the radio voice of Syracuse basketball and football. Player numbers were written on the folder in black Sharpie and all other information was copiously scribbled in black ink; each team got one half of the manila folder. A yellow legal pad was used to write down each team’s schedule and other notes. Since I didn’t have access to in-game statistics,I taught myself how to keep track of each player’s points and fouls on the folder during games.

I employed the same manila-folder-and-legal-pad system when I started doing Kalamazoo Christian’s games, except high school teams didn’t have websites with statistics and player notes, something I wasn’t prepared for. But, after that first game, I got better. I started photocopying all of the high school basketball box scores in the local paper and would file them away, so I’d have some basic statistics for every team. Before games, I would look for the opposing coach and ask him for his starting lineup, key reserves and basic information about his squad. I also served as an analyst on the college basketball broadcasts for Division III Kalamazoo College, which helped me to see the floor better and pick out some of the nuances in team defense and offense, especially away from the ball. And, as I did more Kalamazoo Christian games, it became easier to see what was happening off the ball; I started noticing who was setting screens and what players were doing to get into proper position to rebound or shoot before the ball came their way. My confidence grew, and I realized I had a chance to become a very competent basketball voice.

I really came into my own as a basketball play-by-play broadcaster my first winter in Binghamton, New York. I moved there from Kalamazoo to call baseball but, I was employed by the team just for the season, rather than year-round by the radio station, like I was in Kalamazoo. I landed a job calling high school basketball for a small-town radio station outside of Binghamton, but that wasn’t going to be enough to pay the bills. I was working in pizza delivery when I learned that The College of St. Rose – a Division II school two hours away, in Albany – had just lost their play-by-play broadcaster about two weeks before the start of their season. On a whim, I left a phone message for St. Rose’s athletic director and, two days later, their sports information director called me. After overnighting a CD with clips of my Kalamazoo Christian basketball play-by-play and an in-person meeting, I was hired and my pizza delivery days were over. Most of St. Rose’s basketball games were part of doubleheaders – the women would tip off first, and the men’s game would follow a half-hour after the women’s contest was done – and they wanted me to call all of their men’s and women’s games. Fortunately, St. Rose’s games didn’t conflict with the high school games I’d already agreed to do, but it was still a hectic schedule. I usually called a high school game on Friday night before waking up early on Saturday morning to drive at least two hours to call a pair of St. Rose’s games. One Saturday, I called a St. Rose doubleheader in the afternoon before driving back to the Binghamton area to do a high school basketball playoff game that night. When I wasn’t calling a game, I was traveling to one or preparing for another. That winter, I did about 5-6 games a week and wound up calling 75 basketball games, all of them solo. However, when the season ended, I wasn’t burned out; I was actually energized because I realized that, not only could I call a decent game, but I loved calling basketball. Baseball will always be my favorite sport to broadcast, but I now realized that basketball was a close second.

The following year, I was prepared for another hectic winter of calling basketball when I learned Division I Binghamton University needed a women’s basketball broadcaster. Thanks to contacts I’d cultivated, I was the top candidate for the job. By the end of my interview, I was hired, and I called Binghamton women’s basketball for four years, eventually giving up the gig calling high school games (Instead, I refereed high school and middle school basketball games, which increased my understanding of the game and the rules even further). Cutting back to “only” 30 or so games a year still proved enjoyable.

Wednesday, I start my third year as the voice of University of Nebraska Omaha basketball and my tenth year overall calling basketball. Since there’s more information available, college basketball games easier to call than high school games. Over the years, I’ve learned developing a good relationship with your team’s head coach is invaluable. So is planning ahead and preparing for games in advance, especially if you have a stretch of three or four games in a seven-to-ten day period. Great preparation will lead to me being able to drop the right anecdote or statistic at the right time, which is crucial in basketball play-by-play, since there are few breaks in the action.

Even though a lot has changed since that first game in Kalamazoo, I still get excited whenever I put on a headset and I still look forward to the moment when the ball is thrown into the air for the opening tip. Hopefully, that excitement lasts for a long time.

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Escape From New Jersey

One of the great things about growing up in New York City is its vibrant pro sports landscape. Each of the four major professional leagues has at least two teams in the New York metropolitan area, creating natural rivalries. Eight of the nine New York area sports teams have devoted fan bases.

The one exception has been the New Jersey Nets. I don’t know of a single fan of the NBA team that plied their trade in the Garden State. The Nets were an afterthought; a mediocre team playing in a mediocre arena that was difficult to get to if you didn’t have a car, in front of very few fans. The Knicks dominated the hearts and minds of the region when they were winning and, sometimes, even when they weren’t. Since we didn’t have cable for much of my childhood, I’d watch the handful of Nets games that were televised on WWOR, but only because I wanted to see the Nets’ opponents. I used to make fun of Spencer Ross, the Nets’ play-by-play broadcaster in the early 1990s, because he seemed to be forcing a nickname on every Nets player to try and improve their likability: Kenny Anderson, a talented point guard who had trouble with health and with consistency, was always known as either “Special K” or “Kenny the Kid”; power forward Derrick Coleman, who could be one of the best players in the NBA when he wanted to be, was known strictly as “DC”. Legendary Knicks announcer Marv Albert never had to resort to such shenanigans, I thought to myself.

The thing is, it didn’t have to be this way. When the then-New York Nets agreed to join the NBA for the 1976-1977 season, they were coming off an ABA championship. They also had Julius Erving, one of the most exciting players in basketball history. The Knicks were still competitive, but the core of their great teams of the early 1970s was aging. The Nets had a legitimate chance to make serious inroads into the hearts and minds of New York area basketball fans. However, Nets owner Roy Boe had to pay $3.2 million to join the NBA and make the first of ten $480,000 payments to the New York Knicks to get them to waive their territorial rights. Needing a quick infusion of cash, Boe sold Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers (but only after offering Erving to the Knicks in exchange for them waving the territorial rights payments. The Knicks refused). So, instead of entering the NBA with one of the greatest basketball players of all time and an opportunity to steal some of the Knicks’ thunder, the Nets had to settle for mediocrity and obscurity. They moved from Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum to New Jersey the next season and, despite some halfway decent teams in the early 1980s, were largely ignored. Erving, by the way, would lead the 76ers to an NBA title.

When it comes to sports, baseball was my first love and the NBA was my second. I grew up rooting for those talented Knicks teams of the early 1990s that would always give Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls a run for their money before coming up short. Mom was also a huge Knicks fan and we tried to go to their games at Madison Square Garden whenever we could. But, the Knicks always sold out and we were lucky to catch one or two games a year from the upper reaches of The World’s Most Famous Arena.

Before the start of the 1995-1996 NBA season, Mom decided to get us a seven-game New Jersey Nets ticket plan because all of those plans included at least one Knicks-Nets game. So, off we went from the Bronx, across the George Washington Bridge and onto the New Jersey Turnpike, to see the New York area’s neglected franchise. The Nets played at the nondescript Brendan Byrne Arena, which was named after the governor of New Jersey who got the facility built. During that season, the name changed to the Continental Airlines Arena; of course the Nets would play in the only arena or stadium in the area named after a corporate sponsor. I saw some great basketball teams and players that season. I saw the Bulls, who won an NBA-record 72 games that year, thrash the Nets, but not before Bulls bad boy Dennis Rodman got ejected, taking off his jersey as he angrily stalked off the court. I also saw the Detroit Pistons who were on the upswing with young stars Grant Hill and Allan Houston, a very good Indiana Pacers team featuring future Hall of Famer Reggie Miller, and the 76ers who weren’t very good but had exciting rookie Jerry Stackhouse. I also saw the Knicks, of course, who had the nerve to lose the game I attended.

Unfortunately, I also had to watch the Nets, who served in the Washington Generals role most of the nights we were there. Their most consistent player was Armen Gilliam, a journeyman forward known as “The Hammer”, complete with a hammer pounding a nail on the arena matrix board whenever Gilliam scored. The talented Anderson stayed healthy that season, but the Nets knew they weren’t going to be able to sign him long-term, so they traded him to the Charlotte Hornets in January. That season, the Nets gave out replica jerseys featuring the name and number of rookie forward Ed O’Bannon, their first-round draft pick, despite the fact he wasn’t playing like a future franchise cornerstone; O’Bannon was out of the NBA two years later. During one game, Nets general manager Willis Reed was shown on the video board and showered with boos. The Nets would finish the 1995-1996 season with a 30-52 record and fire head coach Butch Beard, who hasn’t coached in the NBA since.

Things did get better for the Nets on the court after that, culminating in back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in 2002 and 2003. However, the fans never did show up and the Nets continued to fight a losing battle for the hearts, minds and wallets of area sports fans.

But, that’s all changing because the New Jersey Nets are now the Brooklyn Nets.

I’m excited about the Nets laying root in Brooklyn. Many New Yorkers have already embraced the Nets’ new, black and white logo, the Nets have made several moves to improve their on-court product and their games at the brand-new Barclays Center will be a hot ticket all winter. No longer will the Nets’ location on the wrong side of the Hudson River prevent them from drawing fans and keeping and acquiring quality players.

As a Knicks fan, I suppose I shouldn’t be excited about the Nets’ improved prospects. However, I’m looking forward to the Knicks having a true geographic rival. I’m hopeful the Nets will force the Knicks to improve their on- and off-court product since the Knicks will no longer be able to rely on the fact that they have little competition regionally. I think the Knicks will always be the more popular of the two franchises, but the Nets will be able to make a dent as the years progress.

In the near future, I hope I can make it to the Barclays Center for a Knicks-Nets game. It will be neat to watch the Nets play in a bright, colorful arena that’s filled to capacity and easily accessible by public transportation. There will probably still be more Knicks fans than Nets fans there, but at least the Nets will have a decent number of fans rooting them on. It will be a completely different experience from the Nets games I attended in the mid 1990s.

And, this time, the Knicks better win.

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