We’ve watched Jackie Robinson steal home a hundred times on those old reels, and breathed all the loving poetry about the Bums of Brooklyn. It is an idyllic vision, the rainbow merger of community and sports team, an interracial Eden.
Maybe, when the Nets and then the Islanders arrived in Brooklyn, there was a sense that this could all happen again; that the borough would once more fill the stands, unite behind inspiring teams in a newfangled, asymmetric arena. Maybe Barclays Center wasn’t Ebbets Field, but it surely had its charms and convenient subway access.