It's the worst thing tied to our nation's third state since Zach Braff's painfully abortive efforts to produce a unique romantic comedy with Natalie Portman, and now, it's official: the New Jersey Nets have started the 2009-10 season at 0-18.
That's as many losses as there are Grammys Miley Cyrus will win in her career, and the number of yards to go on fourth down for Bill Belichick to maybe think twice about going for it (key word is maybe). All is currently quite the antithesis of a bed of roses in the Garden State.
After a 117-101 route at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks Wednesday night, the Nets ignominiously etched their names into basketball abomination, their eighteenth straight loss surpassing the 1988-89 Miami Heat and the 1999 Los Angeles Clippers for worst start to a season in NBA history.
Just let that sink in for a moment. Eighteen. Straight. Losses...to begin a season; not even the Detroit Lions can say that.
The Nets' embarrassingly pitiful kickoff to the season then begs the nagging question: just how is this team so bad?
The answer, ironically, is that they aren't. At least not on paper. If you look at the starting five from Wednesday night in Trenton Hassell, Josh Boone, Brook Lopez, Devin Harris and Chris Douglas-Roberts, presumably you might conclude that they are a relatively decent squad. With Lopez, a center, leading the team in scoring (18.1 ppg) and rebounding (9.1), Harris as one of the premier point guards in the league, and Douglas-Roberts proving himself to be a veritable scoring threat (16.4 ppg) in just his second year out of Memphis.
Couple this with a bench that includes Terrence Williams, Yi Jianlian, Rafer Alston, Courtney Lee, and Bobby Simmons, and it makes for one cryptic puzzle.
Yet, for a franchise that has made the Finals twice this decade, losses by the bucketful have suddenly become habitual. So what exactly is the problem?
You could argue it was the loss of Vince Carter, who was traded to Orlando this offseason to clear cap space, and whose departure deprived the team of its most prolific scorer (going into Wednesday the Nets were averaging just 85.7 ppg—last in the NBA).
You could argue it's that the team is just too young, with only three players over age 30, and the majority being under 26.
Or, you could argue it's just been pure, dumb luck, as the team failed thrice in securing close victories against the Sixers (who they've lost to by three twice already), the Heat (81-80), and perhaps the equally atrocious (if not more so) Timberwolves (95-93 to open the season).
Whatever the reason for their dismal start, there's no getting around the giant goose egg in the win column while the losses continue to pile up faster than Irish hate-mail addressed to Thierry Henry.
After a 109-96 loss to lowly Sacramento last Friday—their sixteenth in a row—the Nets finally cut ties with longtime head coach Lawrence Frank and replaced him with interim head coach Tom Barrise, who could only cringe from the sideline while watching his team tumble into basketball infamy.
Yet, as dispiriting as the beginning of the season has been, fans still have reason to hope that their club's sinking ship can be brought afloat next offseason when General Manager Kiki Vandeweghe will have anywhere between $24-27 million in projected spending.
Unfortunately, that won't happen until next summer. And who's to say anybody would want to come and play for East Rutherford's finest hoopsters? Especially with the Nets intended move to Brooklyn in 2011 looking murkier with each passing day.
This losing epidemic hasn't just pervaded every crack and corner within the dungeon-esque confines of the IZOD Center, but to its neighbors' homes, as well. At the Meadowlands, the ground-sharing Giants and Jets napalmed their promising starts to the season by dropping five of their last six and six of their last eight, respectively, to temporarily (but probably permanently) remove themselves from the playoff picture.
Across state lines, the Mets completed yet another (expectedly) disappointing year in their first season at Citi Field, the Islanders and Rangers currently sit in the basement of the NHL's Atlantic division, and even the New York Red Bulls, who will move to the new Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey next season, finished dead last in Major League Soccer last season with a deplorable 21 points (nine points behind second-worst San Jose).
Sure, the Devils are always good, but sooner rather than later their greatest icon Martin Brodeur will hang up his skates and more tragically, his legacy.
Heck, if it weren't for the Yankees winning the World Series this November, the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area would undoubtedly be one of America's worst sports cities...if it isn't already.
But all roads lead back to the Nets, whose now infamous string of losses to begin the season highlighted the misery that New York/New Jersey sports fans have endured since Derek Jeter issued his final wave in the Bronx Bombers' celebratory parade some four weeks ago.
New Jersey's next chance to snap their streak of solitude might be their best and will come tonight against the lamentable Charlotte Bobcats who are second-worst in the scoring department at 88.3 ppg.
And if they can't get it done this evening, all eyes throughout the Tri-State region will be glued to their TV sets for a Sunday afternoon clash between the Nets and the division-rival Knicks, who may be the one team more contemptible than the Nets, despite their "superior" 4-15 record.
Both teams are currently playing a prolonged waiting game, eager for this season to end, and the offseason to begin, in the hopes that their over-bloated wallets will be able to entice superstars like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to the Big Apple.
That, along with a promising beginning to each team's seasons, was the plan. It hasn't happened. And the way NY/NJ franchises are being run nowadays, the former might not either.