My dad was born in 1953. When he was a kid, the Mets, Jets, Nets, and Islanders all came into existence within about a decade of each other. They were the “new” teams. For people of his generation, most of them either went with the new teams or the old, established teams (Yankees, Giants, Knicks, Rangers). The Nets were probably the least popular of them, b/c they played in a different league from the Knicks (so technically you could root for both) and then when they joined the NBA they moved off of Long Island.

I was born in 1984. When I started following sports around 1991, all of the teams were “established.” The Mets were just a few years removed from their mid-80’s heyday, the Isles had won 4 straight Stanley cups just a few years earlier, and the Giants had been eclipsed by the Jets and then re-eclipsed them. In a way, the Giants were almost the “new” team in the 80’s considering how bad they’d been since the early 60’s. I became a Mets and an Islanders fan b/c those were the teams whose games I went to when I was young, and I became a Giants fan because they played in the first Super Bowl I ever watched and I just rooted for the team from “New York” (I didn’t know much about geography – good thing, b/c if I did I’d be a Bills fan).

Anyway, it just gets annoying when people assume I’m a Jets fan b/c I root for the Mets and the Islanders. Two losing teams is enough, thank you very much. And fuck the Nets.