Jay-Z Debuts New Brooklyn Nets Logo, Comes One Step Closer to Achieving Gatsby-Ish Destiny
It still seems crazy to us that this is actually going to happen—Jay-Z, minority owner of the once-New Jersey Nets, will be bringing the basketball team to his home borough of Brooklyn, starting next year, in what is sure to instantly become the hippest of the 30 NBA teams, even if its best player in the team's first year is MarShon Brooks. It's so dramatically perfect that it seems like the climactic scene in a movie about Jay-Z's life—one which starts with him getting shut out of a Knicks game and exclaiming to the ticket taker, "One day, I'm gonna have my own basketball team in my own neighborhood! And you won't be allowed to come!" (There might even be a comedic scene of the now-older ticket taker attempting to get Nets seats for opening day and being cruelly rebuffed by the owner himself. Played by Jay Pharoah in his Oscar-winning film breakthrough.)
Anyway, yeah, the Nets are coming to Brooklyn—Atlantic Yards, not Marcy, but close enough—and today, the Jiggaman unveiled (via his Life and Times website) the new logo the team would be using. They're very classy, very understated, especially compared to some of the garish color schemes and fonts the Nets have gone with over their years in the Garden State. They're maybe a little lacking in panache, but cool and old-school is definitely the trend in NBA attire these days, and it fits the Jay-Z / Brooklyn mold stylistically, so we're glad there's not a flaming horse on it or anything. Even cooler, the team store is offering all kinds of cool hip-hop slogan-related merchandise keyed around the Brooklyn theme, ably broken down here by Yahoo! Sports.
Personally, I still wish Jay had changed the team name as well—what other basketball teams are named after part of the court?—but this'll do for now. Who's excited for next regular season already??
