How overrated was New York's Battle of the Boroughs?
With the regular season coming to an end and the postseason just days away, new rivalries will be forged over the course of the next two months, much like the Heat/Pacers and Clippers/Grizzlies feuds formed in recent years.
One rivalry that we know will not be escalating this Spring, however -- and in fact one that never really got off the ground floor of artificial 'rivalry' creation -- is Knicks vs. Nets.
When the Nets announced their move to Brooklyn and eventually made that move last season, the so-called 'Battle of the Boroughs' was supposed to be on. Both teams made the playoffs, the Knicks won the Atlantic Division, 54 games and a series, and then the Nets loaded up by acquiring Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Andrei Kirilenko, among others.
The Knicks may have only countered with a pathetic trade for Andrea Bargnani, but the hype coming into 2013-14 for a New York rivalry was at an all-time high. The teams were expected to once again be the toasts of the Atlantic, the organizations - from top to bottom - were supposed to spend all year trying to one-up each other, and players on both sides legitimately believed they were championship contenders.
Heck, Amar'e Stoudemire still does, bless his heart.
Under the promised pretenses, the four divisional, intra-NYC matchups between the Nets and Knicks were supposed to be among the most highly anticipated, marquee games of the season.
By now you're all well aware that the four meetings between New York and Brooklyn were nothing of the sort.
The Knicks got off to a 3-13 start before alternating between winning and losing streaks en route to a failed last ditch effort for the eighth and final Eastern Conference playoff seeds. Meanwhile, the Nets turned things around after the New Year to lock up no better than a top-five seed, the Raptors of all teams ended up winning the Atlantic, Nets home games still consist of mostly Knicks fans, the first three games between the two teams were all decided by 23-30 points, and the fourth and final meeting - expected to be a crucial Atlantic Division clash on the penultimate night of the regular season - was one of the worst nationally televised games of the year. The Knicks were already mathematically eliminated and without Carmelo Anthony, while the Nets were playing for nothing more than a five-seed and looked all too happy to concede defeat in an 11-point loss.
All that, and we haven't even mentioned that the two teams have combined for just 80 wins between them through 81 games each, or that the closest thing they had to bad blood between them was this exchange between Garnett and Bargnani back in December:
As an example of just how pathetic this rivalry has become, Deron Williams considers just making the playoffs while the Knicks miss out "part of the takeover."
Think about that for a second.
In the city rightfully known as 'The Mecca of Basketball,' in a rivalry that was overhyped and oversold for months leading up to the start of the season, a Nets team that was expected to compete for a championship winning just 45 games and securing a bottom-half playoff seed in a terrible Eastern Conference ended up being considered "part of the takeover" of said rivalry.
What about any of that, other than the fact that the two teams both call New York City home, makes this a rivalry? None of it. As it stands right now, barring a somewhat surprising Brooklyn run in the postseason, Nets vs. Knicks is nothing more than a hot talking point when discussing which New York-based team is in worse shape going forward, or which New York-based team has mortgaged more of its future for limited results in the present.
If that makes a rivalry, then the meaning of the word has truly been lost. And if it doesn't, then the greatly anticipated 'Battle of the Boroughs' was one of the biggest letdowns in an otherwise outstanding 2013-14 NBA season.