History of the Brooklyn Nets
After the dismissal of major pending lawsuits, groundbreaking for Barclays Center occurred on March 11, 2010.
On September 26, 2011, Jay-Z, the Nets' minority owner, announced that the team's new name after the move to Brooklyn would be the Brooklyn Nets. The team officially became the Brooklyn Nets on April 30, 2012. The team's new colors were announced to be black and white, and two official logos designed by Timothy Morris were unveiled. The primary logo is a shield depicting the team name 'Nets', along with a basketball with an overlaid "B". The secondary logo is the same "B-ball" surrounded by a black circle with the text "Brooklyn" and "New York". The new logo's typeface and colors are meant to evoke New York City Subway rollsigns from the 1950s when Brooklyn last had a major league sports team. This rebranding of the team led to a dramatic increase in merchandise sales for the team. On the first two days that the new merchandise was available, total sales from the NBA Store were 10 times that of a typical year when the team was in New Jersey, and in the initial months of the 2012–13 season, the Nets led all NBA teams in apparel sales.
History of the Brooklyn Nets
Newly hired head coach Dave Wohl helped lead the Nets to a respectable record at the beginning of the 1985–86 season, posting a 23–14 start. New Jersey's promising start dissipated with the loss of two of its top scorers. All-Star Micheal Ray Richardson flunked a drug test for the third time and was banned from the league for life, and star center Darryl Dawkins only played 39 games due to a back injury. Long-time Nets veterans Buck Williams and Mike Gminski filled in the gap and powered the club on both offense and defense, helping the Nets earn the 7th seed in the 1986 NBA Playoffs with a 39–43 record before being swept by the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round. This would be the first of many losing seasons for the Nets, and the team would not qualify for the playoffs again until the 1991–92 season.