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
On June 27, 2013, the Nets and the Boston Celtics agreed in principle on a blockbuster trade (finalized July 12), dealing Kris Humphries, Gerald Wallace, MarShon Brooks, Keith Bogans (in a sign-and-trade), and Kris Joseph, along with three first-round draft picks (2014, 2016, 2018) and an option to swap the 2017 first-round pick, for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jason Terry, and DJ White. This created a starting lineup that had a combined 35 All-Star appearances, with Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Pierce, Garnett, and Brook Lopez together forming a new NBA "superteam". The Nets also signed Alan Anderson, Shaun Livingston, All-Star Andrei Kirilenko, and first-round draft pick Mason Plumlee to add further depth to the bench. With all of its off-season moves, Brooklyn ended up with a league-high payroll of $102 million, in addition to having projected luxury tax payments totaling $86 million.