If you were to ask 100 people what city they associated with basketball, almost everyone will give you the same response: New York. Madison Square Garden, the stadium where the New York Knicks play, is known as the “Mecca of Basketball” even though the team has not won a championship in over 50 years.
The Brooklyn Nets are also a wildly popular team in New York. According to Statista, the Knicks and Nets rank 3rd ($452M) and 4th ($405M), respectively, for revenue generated during the 2021-2022 NBA season. So if you’ve ever asked yourself why New York has two basketball teams, this may answer your question. New York is the most populous city in the US by far, coming in at over 8 million people, and thus provides sports franchises with an extremely lucrative opportunity to create a fanbase.
Below we will go into detail about why both New York NBA teams made their way to the Big Apple.
New York NBA Team Timelines
It is important to understand each team’s history at a high level if we want to understand why the franchises move / stayed in their cities. As we can see, the Knicks have always been in NYC since their inception, whereas the Nets have bounced around between NJ and NY.
New Jersey Americans
The Nets started out as a small team in New Jersey named the New Jersey Americans back in 1967. Their owner at the time, Arthur Brown, wanted to have the team based in New York. Unfortunately, most venues were either booked up or didn’t want to deal with the potential ramifications of hosting a team that rivaled the veteran New York Knicks. This led Brown to choose New Jersey; he was able to find a venue and hoped to appeal to the basketball fan who didn’t want to drive into New York to watch a game.
Unfortunately, having a team in NJ was not financially feasible at the time, so in the following season the New Jersey Americans moved to Long Island and became the New York Nets. Now, although it is true that many venues at the time in NYC didn’t initially want to host another team, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there was not a market for it. More details on this further down.
To put in perspective why NYC might have been a better option for a team than NJ, I’ve included some data from the 1970 Census. Below is a table comparing populations to some of the larger cities in each state (Note: the total population per state is not the sum of each state’s cities listed).
| New Jersey | New York | ||
| City | Population | City | Population |
| Newark | 1,856,556 | New York City | 11,526,649 |
| Jersey City | 609,226 | Albany | 720,786 |
| Paterson / Clifton / Passaic | 1,358,794 | Buffalo | 1,349,211 |
| Trenton | 303,968 | Rochester | 882,667 |
| Atlantic City | 175,043 | Syracuse | 635,946 |
| State Total | 7,168,164 | State Total | 18,190,740 |
As you can see, New York City alone had more people living there than the entire state of New Jersey at the time. This made NYC a lot more appealing for a sports franchise; the higher population density could provide a team with more options as to which arena they chose as their home. In New York City, almost any place you chose would have many potential fans living in close proximity, whereas in NJ, people are more spread out and therefore not as close to the stadium.
This is why Brown wanted the team to originally be in New York. It made much more financial sense. What’s ironic is that the whole advantage of them moving to New Jersey (only place where Brown could find an arena that could / would host them) ended up being their demise. The Americans made it to the playoffs and were supposed to play the Kentucky Colonels at the Teaneck Armory (the home arena of the Americans.) However, it was already booked for a circus, leaving the team with no court to play on. After a failed attempt at moving the game to the Commack Arena on Long Island (court conditions were deemed extremely dangerous), the ABA commissioner forced the Americans to forfeit the game, booting them out of the playoffs. What’s funnier is that for the following season, when the New Jersey Americans became the New York Nets, their new home was the Commack Arena.
In summary, the reason why the New Jersey Americans moved to Long Island, becoming the New York Nets, was because the Americans were not a success financially and they did not have enough of a following or influence to secure a consistent home.
New York Nets (Long Island)
Ironically, in the first season that the team moved to Long Island, they had a worse attendance than they did in New Jersey, only drawing in about half of the crowd it previously did. This was largely due in part to its horrendous record of 17-61. Likely frustrated with the team’s lack of financial success, Brown sold the team to a man named Roy Boe for $1.1 million (surprisingly, this is only equaled to about $10 million when adjusted for inflation in 2023; NBA franchises on average are worth about $2.9 billion today).
In the following season, the Nets made some changes to their roster and were able to make it to the playoffs; this bolstered their attendance significantly, pulling in more than three times the amount it did the season before. With the exception of the 1972-73 season, the Nets had a stellar track record for a number of years until they left the ABA to join with the NBA.
In short, joining the NBA ultimately led to the downfall of the Nets. Upon entering the league, the team had to pay $3.2 million to the National Basketball Association. On top of that, the league also made the Nets pay a whopping $4.8 million to the Knicks as an encroachment fee on the Knicks’ territory. Seeing as the team was barely worth $1 million 10 years prior, these payments, totaling to $8 million, left the team relatively illiquid.
The Nets were essentially forced to sell their star, Julius Erving, to the Philadelphia 76ers to get some liquidity. This left the franchise in really bad shape, having a horrendous 22-60 season in 1976 and having terrible fan attendance. Having to choose between the survival of the franchise as a whole or the survival of the Nets in Long Island, Boe decided that moving the Nets would be the best decision.
Boe relocated the Nets back to New Jersey; although it is not completely known as to why that was the case (since the team left the state previously), if we look at the average NBA attendance numbers from NBA and ABA teams, we might be able to surmise.
The Association for Professional Basketball Research has tracked the average attendance at ABA and NBA games since most teams’ inceptions; below we’ve compared the average attendance for each team in 1967-1968 (when the Americans / Nets moved from NJ to Long Island) to 1976 – 1977 (when the Nets moved back to NJ). Note that this table only includes teams that have a record in both seasons.
| Team Name | 1967 – 68 Avg. Attendance | 1967 – 68 Total Attendance | 1976 – 77 Avg. Attendance | 1976 – 77 Total Attendance |
| Baltimore Bullets / Washington Bullets | 4,754 | 171,146 | 11,408 | 467,745 |
| Boston Celtics | 8,670 | 320,788 | 12,619 | 517,391 |
| Chicago Bulls | 3,975 | 131,165 | 11,625 | 476,636 |
| Cincinnati Royals / Kansas City Kings | 4,155 | 124,668 | 8,062 | 330,526 |
| Dallas Chaparrals / San Antonio Spurs* | 3,971 | 154,862 | 8,004 | 336,189 |
| Denver Rockets / Nuggets | 4,128 | 161,007 | 17,150 | 703,133 |
| Detroit Pistons | 7,005 | 224,164 | 7,410 | 303,792 |
| Indiana Pacers | 5,167 | 201,522 | 10,551 | 432,726 |
| Los Angeles Lakers | 10,276 | 421,326 | 12,230 | 501,434 |
| New Jersey Americans / New York Nets | 2,054 | 43,195 | 7,755 | 317,952 |
| New York Knicks | 14,448 | 534,568 | 15,727 | 644,811 |
| Philadelphia 76ers | 8,704 | 304,631 | 15,438 | 632,949 |
| San Diego / Houston Rockets | 4,067 | 188,865 | 8,486 | 347,920 |
| San Francisco / Golden State Warriors | 4,520 | 185,322 | 11,691 | 479,328 |
| Seattle Supersonics | 6,524 | 202,263 | 12,980 | 532,196 |
| St. Louis /Atlanta Hawks | 6,288 | 201,215 | 5,238 | 214,775 |
| Total Averages | 6,169 | 223,169 | 11,023 | 452,469 |
As we can see, fan attendance at NBA games more than doubled since the team was last in New Jersey. Ironically, the Nets still had to pay a $4 million dollar encroachment fee for moving to NJ since it was still considered Knicks territory. However, according to this New York Times post from 1977, “The total is to be paid over a 20‐year period.”. This payment structure likely game the team enough liquidity to keep their doors open for longer whilst moving to an area in which they saw a more promising turnout.
As another part of the incentive, the team would be playing in the newly-built Brendan Byrne Arena (most recently known as the IZOD Center) in East Rutherford, New Jersey. This stadium would be brand new and could hold over 20,000 NBA fans (5,000 more than at the previous home for the Nets, the Nassau Coliseum).
New York Nets (New Jersey) / Brooklyn Nets
For the first few years in NJ, while at their interim stadium (Rutgers Athletic Center), the Nets experienced below average attendance compared to its years at the Nassau Coliseum. However, this was likely expected since the stadium could only hold 8,000 fans and the team was redeveloping their fanbase. The move to the Brendan Byrne Arena in 1981, paired with a solid roster rebuilding from the previous few years, proved to be a great success. The team’s average season attendance was consistently higher than it ever was on Long Island and they also had winning seasons from 1981 to 1985.
Unfortunately, the Nets were never able to gain consistent momentum, only making the playoffs 4 times in the subsequent 15 seasons. In the early 2000s, they ended up making it to the Finals twice, only to lose it both times.
In 1999, the Nets and Yankees merged together under an ownership company formerly known as YankeeNets, LLC. This was mainly done to help provide leverage to each team for negotiating cable contracts as well as arena construction contracts. The owner of the Nets at the time, Lewis Kats, was particularly interested in getting out of the stadium the team had been in for almost 20 years. A new stadium would provided better opportunities to earn more revenue from state-of-the-art luxury suites, allow him to price regular stadium seats at a premium, etc.
Ironically, this merger would ultimately lead to the the transition of the Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn. The owners of the Yankees and Nets consistently had arguments over player contracts, management of the teams, and more. This, along with the fact that the Nets were unable to secure a construction contract for an arena in Newark, led to the divestiture of the Nets from YankeeNets to a group called Brooklyn Basketball LLC. in 2004.
The owner of this group that purchased the Nets, Bruce Ratner, was a real estate developer and did not wait long to get a new stadium underway. In 2005, the team announced that they would officially be moving to Brooklyn. It took 7 years before the team was able to move into the Barclays Center and officially become what they are known as today, the Brooklyn Nets.
New York Knicks
For the context of this article, there’s not too much that needs to be said about the New York Knicks. Mainly because they were New York’s first NBA team and have never had a location or name change. The only rationale the Knicks ever had for moving to NY was to become NYC’s first and only (at the time) professional basketball team. The franchise was incepted in 1946 and was 1 of 11 teams that were a part of the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The original teams of the BAA, which merged with the NBL and rebranded to the NBA in 1949, are listed below:
- Cleveland Rebels
- Detroit Falcons
- Pittsburgh Ironmen
- Toronto Huskies
- Boston Celtics
- Chicago Stags
- New York Knickerbockers
- Philadelphia Warriors
- Providence Steamrollers
- St. Louis Bombers
- Washington Capitols
Plain and simple, the Knicks stayed in New York because they always had good fan turnout at Madison Square Garden and were always a contender in the competitive league in their early years. Furthermore, MSG came to be known as “the Mecca of basketball” as the sport got more popular, only solidifying the city and its home team as the center of the sport. The Knicks were also initially owned by Ned Irish, who happened to be the owner MSG. This ensured that the team would always have a home arena to play in (a necessary and coveted assurance for basketball franchises at the time).
The graph below shows average fan turnout for Knicks since the 1940s. As you can see, the numbers grew consistently for the first few years as the team solidified itself. Once the sport became big enough, there was really no reason for the franchise to move anywhere else; they were playing for the biggest city in the USA, if the team was going to be profitable anywhere, it would be in New York City.
Conclusion
As one would expect, the main reasons for New York having two basketball teams is because it is the most populated city in the United States and therefore has the most potential to be profitable for more than one team. The Knicks lucked out and were able to grow their roots in the city well before any other franchise had the chance.
The Nets were a team that always wanted to be in New York, but had to go through a few iterations before settling. When the Nets moved to New York for the first time, they were in a league of their own (ABA) and were actually doing well financially in the beginning of their tenure on Long Island. However, once the Nets joined the NBA, they were hit with multiple fees that almost left them insolvent and forced them to find another home that would provide them with a better stadium and increased fan turnout.
The Nets ended up moving back to New York by way of Brooklyn for similar reasons. They would represent a different part of New York City than the Knicks and would get a brand new stadium that they could draw old and new fans to.