Coliseum to get Nets’ D League team in 2017

Noah Manskar

The New York Islanders left big shoes to fill in the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, but the Brooklyn Nets are trying to fill them.

The Brooklyn team has bought an NBA Development League affiliate called the Long Island Nets that will play its home games at the Nassau Coliseum, team officials said Friday.

After playing their first season next year at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, in 2017 the Long Island Nets will become the Nassau Coliseum’s first professional sports team since the Islanders’ departure for the Brooklyn arena.

“The Long Island Nets will have a world-class sports and entertainment destination to call home once transformation of the new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum is complete,” Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano said in a statement.

The announcement came a day after county officials broke ground on a $260 million renovation to the aging Coliseum that will overhaul and downsize the arena and build an adjacent retail complex.

Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center CEO Brett Yormark and Nets owners Mikhail Prokhorov and Bruce Ratner, the developer behind both Barclays Center and the Coliseum renovation, will also own and run the Long Island team, the 12th in the D-League to have such an operational structure.

Yormark touted the move as a step toward developing talent for the NBA team “in all areas of (its) business.” A Nets press release said five of its players and two of its coaches started in the D-League.

“The Long Island Nets will be a great brand extension of the Brooklyn Nets, and will give us the opportunity to reclaim a territory that was once ours,” Yormark said. “The creation of the Long Island Nets is indicative of our ownership’s commitment to the Nets and to the franchise’s future success.”

Prokhorov owns 80 percent of the Nets, and in late October he bought an 85-percent stake in Nassau Events Center, the corporation Ratner created to run the Coliseum. Ratner holds a 20-percent stake in the Nets.

The Long Island Nets are the Brooklyn team’s second foray into the D-League.

The Springfield Armor in Massachusetts was its affiliate from 2011 to 2014, when the team moved to Grand Rapids, Mich. after the Detroit Pistons bought it.

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