Twice as nice: Islanders ink 25-year deal to join Nets at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in 2015
It began six or seven years ago when then-New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner and New York Islanders owner Charles Wang played a little game of “Wouldn’t it be nice?” during their periodic friendly lunches.
Both men were eager to have a new arena deal in place for their struggling franchises.
Ratner, determined to bring the Nets to Downtown Brooklyn from East Rutherford, N.J., and Wang, trying in vain to land a deal for a state-of-the-art facility in Uniondale, N.Y., pondered the possilbility of both area teams landing in the same building.