It was a special Saturday night in New York.
Game 1 of the first-round series between the Nets and the Celtics wasn’t just about basketball. The crowd of 14,391 fans at Barclays Center was the biggest for any indoor sporting event in the city since before the pandemic shut down New York 14 months ago.
The long wait of anticipation came to a close when Brooklyn’s “Big Three” finally hit the postseason hardwood in their Icon (black) uniforms, but it was the fans that made the night remarkable.
For the first time since March 8, 2020, when the old-look Nets — playing the first game of Jacque Vaughn’s interim coaching tenure — met up with the Bulls, the doors to the Barclays Center swung open wide to almost all.