Pacific Park, Brooklyn
The Barclays Center is the new home arena of the National Basketball Association's Brooklyn Nets, and the NHL's New York Islanders which was purchased by a group led by principal developer Bruce Ratner with the intention of making it and the arena the centerpiece of the whole project. This brought major league professional sports to Brooklyn for the first time since the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, California after the 1957 season. The arena’s design once included an ice skating rink and a green roof. An NBA basketball team now owned primarily by Russia's second richest man Mikhail Prokhorov, the Nets began playing at the Barclays Center arena in 2012. Formerly the New Jersey Nets, the Nets re-branded themselves when they moved to the Barclays Center. Prokhorov is an avid basketball fan, and, with 80 percent ownership in the Nets, he has become the first Russian owner of a major U.S. professional sports franchise. The deal was necessary for Ratner, who was risking losing tax-exempt financing and the Barclays naming-rights deal if he did not break ground within three months' time.
History of the Brooklyn Nets
In April 2016, the Nets hired former Knicks and Hawks assistant Kenny Atkinson as the new head coach. During Nets free agency in the summer of 2016, the team started and have nearly completed their rebuilding process by acquiring through sign or trade deals the following; Randy Foye, Anthony Bennett, Trevor Booker, Luis Scola, and Jeremy Lin. However, the Nets fell below even the lowest of expectations when they secured a league-worst 8–33 record at the midway point of the season, and an 11-game losing streak with a 119–109 loss to the Raptors. The streak was the longest since their 0–18 start in the 2009–2010 season. This was partly because starting point guard Jeremy Lin had missed 29 of the 41 games played up until that point with a hamstring injury. On January 9, 2017, the Nets waived Anthony Bennett and was replaced by Quincy Acy who was given a 10-day contract. They ultimately finished 20–62, the worst record in the league. Additionally, as part of the deal that brought them Pierce and Garnett four years earlier, they had to swap their 2017 first-round pick with the Celtics.