Long Island Nets looking for fans as well as wins

Back on the night of January 7, the Long Island Nets played the Birmingham Squadron, the Hawks G League affiliate, at Nassau Coliseum. The Nets won, 112-104, but the box score was notable not because Kendall Brown scored 25 points. No, the big number that night was 625, the attendance. It was cold, and it had snowed the night before. Still that was an ugly number for a professional team in any sport no matter the weather.

Things have gotten better since, dramatically so. Long Island, playing as “Les Nets” in suburban Montreal, drew an average of nearly 7,000 fans to six “home” games at Place Bell, a total of 40,000.

Then, on February 11, in a game on Long Island rather than in the Province of…