Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A non-New Jersey sports franchise is flirting with a move to the Garden State.
While the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team negotiates a deal with the city of Brotherly Love for a new arena, the organization is listening to overtures from New Jersey to bring the team across the river to Camden. The state is reportedly offering the Sixers up to $800 million in tax credits to build a multi-billion dollar waterfront facility in the South Jersey city that already holds their practice facility. First of all, I don’t believe the 76ers actually want to come to New Jersey. This is the same move George Steinbrenner used on multiple occasions, threatening to take the New York Yankees out of the Bronx and into the Meadowlands. The Yankees were never crossing the George Washington Bridge, Steinbrenner just wanted to squeeze more money out of New York City for a new Yankee Stadium.
Josh Harris and David Blitzer, owners of the Sixers (and the New Jersey Devils, mind you) are playing the same game of chess and using the Garden State as a pawn. Sixers ownership surely doesn’t want to leave Philly (where they’ve played for more than 60 years), Sixers fans don’t want to cross the Walt Whitman Bridge to see a game and Camden doesn’t want to be blamed if the new arena is a disaster.
But even if the Sixers’ dalliance with a move across the Delaware River was earnest, it would have to come with one concrete condition: Put New Jersey in the team name. Because I’m sick and tired of sports franchises that are happy to play in New Jersey but won’t say they’re from our Garden State, like it’s some ugly little secret
Five professional sports franchises play their home games in New Jersey, and only one of them takes full ownership of their Garden State locale — the New Jersey Devils. Gotham FC of the National Women’s Soccer League claims both New Jersey and New York in its team name, but Gotham is clearly a New York reference. They share a stadium with the New York Red Bulls of Major League Soccer in Harrison, which is a short PATH ride from New York City, but is certainly still in New Jersey. If you can read a defense in soccer, you can read a map!
But our football teams are, of course, the most egregious. Maybe I was just a dumb kid, but for much of my childhood I legitimately thought they were the New Jersey Jets and the New Jersey Giants. It wasn’t until the 2000 season when the Giants put their “NY” logo back on their helmets that I realized the geographical fallacy. Ignorance is bliss.
They weren’t too proud to move their teams from New York to New Jersey, as the Giants made the jump in 1976 and the Jets followed suit in 1984 — both teams were stuck sharing venues with the city’s baseball teams, and building a football stadium in New York City proved to be all but impossible. They both found a happy home in Bergen County, but nearly half a century later they’re still too proud to recognize they actually play here? That’s a slap in the face of every New Jersey sports fan.And don’t get me started on the Nets, who pulled the same move as half of my high school class — they thought they were too cool for New Jersey, moved to Brooklyn and realized no one cared about them there. The team has struggled on the court and to draw fans since leaving Newark. Some call it a curse, I just call it Jersey karma.
This saga could end sooner than later. Philadelphia lawmakers expect a decision on plans for a new arena in their city sometime in the fall, which would end this political posturing. The decision can’t come soon enough. Because bringing an NBA team back to New Jersey would be great in theory. But that’s all this is, a theory. The Sixers aren’t coming to New Jersey, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise just to make their rich owners even richer.
And those owners should stop pretending that New Jersey is just an extension of surrounding cities.
Leave a Reply