New City, New Owner, New Arena, New Logo, even "New Jerseys". Over the past year, much has
been made over one of the largest public rebranding efforts to impact American
sports in decades. Attempting to make the most of a move to a city
that is home to its own recent notable rebranding efforts, the New Jersey Nets have
done much to capture the publics imagination with its move to Brooklyn and have
made it clear that this team will be new in almost every way.
Starting with the purchase of
the team by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov over two years ago, a
brash new style of ownership commenced with selling the message that the move
to Brooklyn would not be simply a relocation of the team but a complete
rebranding of the Nets as an NBA franchise. The Nets have benefitted from
their popular association with minority owner Jay-Z, the generous financing for
their Arena by Barclays Bank, and their change to a new team logo which may
reflect the only aspect of the move to Brooklyn that could be described as
"minimalist".
While all of these factors bode
well for the teams future success in Brooklyn, one important point stands out
when it comes to rebranding a sports team, that your team brand is only as
strong as the brand of those players on your opening day roster. Cue to Dwightmare (a trademark not liklely sought out by Orlando's Dwight
Howard) 2012, and you can see how much star power, particluarly in the NBA,
means to the brand of a team. The Nets, realizing that to add a star of
D12's stature, they would have to retain a player of Deron William's stature,
did what was necessary to bring back the Texas native whose eye had been
wandering towards his hometown Dallas Mavericks since the Free Agency period
began.
In order to keep Deron
Williams, and thus further their efforts to land Dwight Howard, the Nets knew
they had to add an attractive piece to the roster. With most teams
holding onto their franchise superstars for dear life, one player was notably
very available, Joe Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks. The currrent owner of
the most head-scratching contract in the NBA, a contract that exceeds those of
Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony, Joe Johnson was widely thought
to be significantly overpaid based on his Tier 2 talents, lack of star power,
and his lack of connection with Atlanta fans. To Atlanta, he was
expendable and his trade necessary in order to start their own rebuilding process, to
New Jersey, he was the player who could help keep the player that would land
the player the Nets truly wanted on their opening day roster.
In an era of the "Big
Three" in the NBA, where in order to compete or be attractive to
available players, a team must have a trio of stars-super stars on their team,
the Nets made the trade for Joe Johnson, and although not their preferred
player of choice, he was instrumental in working out an extension for Deron Williams. Without Deron Williams, the Nets would have opened their new arena with a
roster largely seen as a disappointment. So while the analysts can argue
the finer points of the competitiveness of the Nets roster, the teams rebranding efforts should be
viewed as a success. However, without landing those first two star
pieces, and keeping hope alive to land D12 sometime over the next year, the new
arena and those new uniforms would have, on opening day, felt otherwise quite empty. For more, a NY Times recent article and a LA Times article on the Brooklyn
Net's rebranding efforts.
