The Brooklyn Nets have been practicing in Barclays Center in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Their practice facility, the PNY Center located in Rutherford, N.J., was flooded by the hurricane and unusable as offices, much less for professional basketball. Since then, the team’s practiced in Barclays Center, both on the main and side courts.
At the time of the hurricane, Avery Johnson said that he was imagining a return to the facility within a couple of weeks. Now, it appears that they’ll be out much longer:
It’s been an adjustment,” Brooklyn coach Avery Johnson said. “At one time, you think you just have to deal with moving into a building, but now here comes Hurricane Sandy, and she wasn’t invited. That threw off everything.”
The team’s practice facility in East Rutherford, where the Nets are contractually committed to practicing for two more seasons, suffered substantial water damage from Sandy, and is not expected to be usable until perhaps January, Johnson said.
I’m hardly a hardwood specialist, but it doesn’t take one to know that a flood of water warping a wood court over the course of multiple days is not going to do good things for it. Though it’s certainly possible that the court is fixable, it wouldn’t shock me to hear later down the road that the court is just beyond repair and they’ll need to install a new one.
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