The boys are back in town: How Nets coaches and players live among Brooklynites, like the Dodgers of

NEW YORK — Every afternoon of a Brooklyn Nets home game, coach Kenny Atkinson walks to work. He considers it “therapy” from the pressures of the job. Wearing his Nets tracksuit and a fresh pair of Nikes, he straps on his backpack, where he keeps his black wingtips. He pulls on a stocking cap, throws his tailored suit over his shoulder, crosses through the front door and descends the stoop of his brownstone home.

Atkinson is the first coach of a major pro team that plays in Brooklyn to live in Brooklyn since 1958 — when Walter Alston managed the Dodgers before they moved to Los Angeles. Like Alston before him, Atkinson walks among Brooklyn’s people because he’s become one of them. The same thing typically happens to the Nets’ players, like the Dodgers before them.

The construction workers laying brick yell down from the scaffolding to say hello. The men and women sipping their cappuccinos in the cafes don’t look up, but he sees them and wishes he could stop for one.

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The shops, be they the local boutiques or the big-box chains that line Atlantic Avenue, bustle with activity each day. Shoppers carrying bags of designer jeans and shoes nearly bump into him as they try to hail a cab or navigate toward the subway station.

And the time of day means he’ll soon see the school children spilling out of the doors and onto the pavement. They’ll be holding their mother’s hand or scooting along on skateboards, barreling toward Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The Barclays Center, where the Nets play, is about 1 ½ miles from Atkinson’s home in Brooklyn’s charming Cobble Hill neighborhood. He tries to take a slightly different route each time, he says, to “just to see different stuff.”

“It’s lively, it’s dynamic,” Atkinson said. “It calms my nerves before the game. I breathe. Just kind of weaving. It’s a cool walk.”

Atkinson, 52, is a native New Yorker who grew up on Long Island. When he interviewed for this job in the spring of 2016, while he was an assistant with Mike Budenholzer on the Atlanta Hawks, Atkinson told Nets ownership he’d live in Brooklyn if he were hired. The team had only recently opened its multi-million-dollar training facility, overlooking the East River on 39th Street in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, and Atkinson knew a unique living opportunity within the NBA was there for the taking.

It’s rare in the league for a training facility to be within a few miles of the arena (the Nets’ HSS Training Center is three miles from Barclays). Even more unusual is for the locales of the two gyms to be in the same section of a bustling city, and for that same section to be so… livable.

When the Nets hired Atkinson, who was busy with the Hawks in the playoffs, his wife, Laura, spent four days in Brooklyn, walking its streets and touring its neighborhoods before settling on Cobble Hill.

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Just a couple blocks from the Atkinson brownstone is his children’s school. His son, Anthony, is 12; his daughter, Annika, 10, and they can walk or take their bikes to the park for soccer practice, or to the cement-floored playground that’s even closer to their home.

When Atkinson first started with the Nets he was walking home from games too, until the team’s front office and his wife made a face about him going out alone so late at night. Now, when the game is over, he slips out the side door of Barclays and hails a cab.

“Like my wife always jokes, when I first get in the door, I never talk about the game,” he said. “I talk about the taxi driver, this guy I met, a guy who was from Pakistan. What a super nice guy. We talked about whatever. It’s a New York experience, it’s really the Brooklyn experience. It’s not grandiose, it’s not spectacular, it’s your daily stimulation that you might not have if you’re living in a different place, living in a suburban place.”

There is almost nothing that can stop Atkinson from his routine. Doesn’t matter if the sun is shining in November, or the wind is howling in December, or the snow is falling in February or rain sprinkling in March.

“It’s gotta be horrendous (weather) for me not to walk,” Atkinson said. “And I enjoy that, that’s part of New York. You throw the hat on, the wind’s whipping, the suit’s blowing in the wind. I grew up in a family where my dad grew up in the latter part of the depression, where he would purposefully make his life harder. He coulda had more comfort and decided to fake whatever it is. Part of it is just that feeling of ‘Yeah, I’m toughing it out.’”

He walks among Brooklyn’s people because he’s become one of them. The same thing typically happens to the Nets’ players.

Walking down Old Fulton Street, past the row of historic pizza shops, the first thing they see isn’t the park ahead, but what’s behind it.

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Rain or shine, the backdrop for Brooklyn Bridge Park is the majestic skyline of southern Manhattan, a global center for financial power. On a sunny day, the East River glistens; the Statue of Liberty stands in clear view off to the left.

The people walk Main Street, along the water, or funnel toward Fulton Ferry Landing from Old Fulton. Some are trying to catch a boat to the city, others are sipping their coffee, with their dogs or their baby carriages, on a stroll through Brooklyn Bridge Park.  They’re computer developers from Cobble Hill. Hedge fund managers from Park Slope. They’re touring Russian ballet dancers staying at the Marriott in Brooklyn. Or artists from Fort Greene.

Or a six-time NBA All-Star, with a championship ring and a new $137 million contract.

“Yeah, sometimes you might catch Kyrie walking around over here,” said Robert Habersham, of Manhattan, who drove across the bridge one Saturday in November to visit the park with his son.

“I’ve seen Kyrie, and I’ve seen Kevin Durant and a couple of the other players here,” Habersham said.

Along the water are six “piers.” Pier 2 consists of five full-length basketball courts paved with asphalt. Two are under the cover of a roof. All of them have the Brooklyn Nets’ “B” on the backboards.

The men who clean the park, and those who play basketball there, all seemingly have a story of having seen Irving or Durant milling about.

“They come out here, it means they’re like, down to Earth, you know,” said Camden Malik, of Brooklyn, who was hooping on one of the courts. “They inspire me. They’re both NBA champions. They’re role models. I would love to play with them. Actually I want to give them my music.”

Malik, an aspiring rapper, turned around and jacked a 3-pointer. And then offered instructions of where to find his music on iTunes.

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“There are a million parks I could go to in Manhattan,” Habersham says, “but I choose to come here, because not only is it a great park, but the chances of running into one of them, or getting a chance to play against one of them, that’s the reason I actually come here.”

Upon signing with the Nets last summer, Irving purchased a high-rise condo overlooking the park in the DUMBO neighborhood. Durant, who got a four-year, $164 million deal before joining the Nets last summer, already had a home in Manhattan. He’s looking to buy right now in Brooklyn. They are just the two latest, richest examples of the Nets’ embrace of their community.

Most of the Nets call Brooklyn home, counting Spencer Dinwiddie, who’s staying on the Manhattan side of the bridge until the new condo he purchased in DUMBO is finished. Durant and DeAndre Jordan live in Manhattan too, but at least in Durant’s case, that’s going to change.

Atkinson and Nets general manager Sean Marks used to openly encourage players to move to Brooklyn, almost, but not quite, making it an order. Now, when a new player signs or is traded to the Nets, Atkinson and Marks don’t say anything about where to live. They don’t need to.

When Garrett Temple signed his two-year, $10 million contract with the Nets last summer, he moved to the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, near the park, into a townhouse. He said he and his girlfriend walked their dog to the park one night, about 8 o’clock, and were surprised to see the courts at Pier 2 bursting with pickup games. So they sat and watched.

A few nights later, Temple and his Nets teammates played on those same courts as part of the franchise’s annual “Practice at the Park” event, which is free and open to the public.

“It was the most people I’ve seen at a practice,” Temple said. “This is my first time ever having a practice with fans in an outside setting. Everybody was just loving their borough. It was crazy because we had walked to the Brooklyn Bridge Park to see people hoop a couple days before that. So to see the vibe and for us to shoot, mess around and be on the same hoop the next night they’d probably end up playing pick up on, I bet that felt good for the guys. I think it’s a matter of pride.”

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Dinwiddie, a Net and Brooklyn resident since December 2016, said living so close to so many teammates “helps you feel more connected, not only to the team, but also to Brooklyn.

“Also, it helps the team feel like Brooklyn is behind it,” Dinwiddie said. “When you’re all kind of in one spot, you’re fighting for like a common goal in a sense. So it’s a little different than if you live 30 minutes this way and that person lives 45 minutes that way and this person lives 30 minutes the other way in four different directions.

“Even if it’s like a placebo effect or something weird, it’s something we all feel.”

“You hear about the Knicks, they don’t live in Manhattan,” said Jarrett Allen, the Nets’ center who’s lived in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood going on three seasons now.

“It’s expensive as shit (in Manhattan),” Allen said. “They live in Westchester. We’re here living in Brooklyn and close to the practice facility. We’re all getting involved in the community and people can see the effects of what we’re doing. I think people are taking note of the things we do and how in tune with Brooklyn we actually are.”

Most NBA teams, and cities, aren’t set up quite like Brooklyn.

Los Angeles, a preferred destination right now, has two teams that share a historic arena downtown, Staples Center, and train miles away near the beach. For the Lakers, it’s El Segundo, Calif., next to LAX; the Clippers work out in Culver City. Players on both teams are spread out all over the place.

Or, take a smaller, cold-weather city like Cleveland. The arena is downtown and the practice facility only 10 miles south, but almost all the players live in the suburbs. LeBron’s mansion, near the practice facility, was a good 30-minute drive from Irving’s home in a western Cleveland suburb. Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson bought homes in a posh, eastern suburb, another 30 minutes or more from Irving.

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The Cavs sold out every game over those four seasons when LeBron took them to the Finals, and the Lakers, of course, have never had a problem with their fan base supporting them.

But the connection between Nets players and their fans is more organic, because they all live together.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Najee Upson, 26, a Brooklynite and employee at the Whole Foods grocery store in Gowanus, where Allen shops. “The fact that they choose to stay here in Brooklyn compared to everywhere else, it’s a pretty cool experience, honestly, to just see them walking out in the open. We’re so used to seeing them on TV, so when we see them on the streets or just roaming around or coming here into the store, it’s like wow. That’s something.”

“They could have people shop for them, but they do it themselves,” adds Darius Liauto, 22, another Whole Foods employee. “It’s pretty cool.”

Allen stands 6-foot-10, and that doesn’t count his Afro. So you can’t miss him when he walks into Whole Foods. Liauto said Allen comes in to buy lettuce, strawberries and avocados. He talks politely with employees and fellow shoppers, and if they ask, he’ll pose for a picture.

“It started as a place to shop,” Allen said. “I cook dinner a lot. It’s just, I like cooking. And then after that people started recognizing me. But, I go there and it’s not like they’re stunned to see who I am. It’s like, ‘Oh, hey Jarrett, how’s it going?’

“Some people I know well and I ask about their day. I’m not the superstar, I’m just a guy shopping.”

The Brooklyn of guns and drug sales on corners, the one immortalized by rappers Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z. If it still exists, it’s harder to find.

“When you heard about Brooklyn, especially when I was younger, Biggie and Jay-Z, that’s all you heard about,” said Allen, who is 21. “You goin’ to Brooklyn, you’re probably going to get shot. I hate to say it, that’s all the songs were about. Now I get here and you see the past, the origins of Brooklyn, how it’s changed. It’s not how I imagined it to be when I was younger.”

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Much has been written about the gentrification of the borough. Littered throughout this story are the names of swanky, cozy neighborhoods from all over Brooklyn. Apartments there can go for $4,500 a month, or more, but Dinwiddie said: “You can kind of get a vibe for how it was.”

“My parents moved to Brooklyn when I was about two,” said Trimell Collins, 28, a manager at Juliana’s pizza shop on Old Fulton Street, where Dinwiddie goes to eat. “I grew up in Brooklyn in the ’90s. Those who were around here in the ’90s will tell you, Brooklyn in the ’90s versus today, black and white. Totally different. This neighborhood wasn’t the neighborhood that it is today. The neighborhood then was pretty run down. They had prostitutes, drugs, it was bad, a bad neighborhood. Now look, they cleaned it up. That’s why I say you have to have that edge to you, coming up in Brooklyn in the ’90s.”

Collins has waited on numerous Nets players, coaches and front-office members. Among the things that are “cool” about Brooklyn today is the food scene. And Juliana’s is definitely a part of that.

On any given day, the lines to get a table at Juliana’s or Grimaldi’s, which is next door, stretch around the pizza houses and spill onto the street. Collins said the Nets are polite and don’t mind waiting in the lines, but he tries not to make them wait too long.

“I love it around there,” Dinwiddie said. “You get some requests for pictures and whatnot, but it’s not a super disturbing environment. The main thing is I love their food and they tend to help me out every now and then and get me in when the line is long.”

Brook Lopez plays for the Milwaukee Bucks now. But he is the Nets’ all-time leading scorer and was among the first (if not the first) of them to move to Brooklyn, in 2016. He lived in Park Slope, near the arena, and when the Bucks play at Barclays, he makes sure a calzone from Broccolino is waiting for him.

“I enjoyed the food the most,” Lopez said. “Going from restaurant to restaurant, and the restaurants in the area had great pride in having an NBA team there, the Brooklyn Nets there. And it was great to get to know the owners, the patrons, all that stuff.”

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Joe Harris, who’s lived near the arena since signing with the Nets in 2016, has a favorite pizza spot — Roberta’s — in Bushwick, another Brooklyn neighborhood. Atkinson said conversation among players and coaches daily centers around the latest burger joint, or pub, or five-star restaurant someone stumbled into the night before.

Harris, by the way, is playing out the last season of a two-year, $16 million contract. He doesn’t have a car in Brooklyn. He walks or takes an Uber to games, practices or to get something to eat.

Allen just bought a Tesla but can be seen unfolding himself from the back of an Uber to go to practice.

And they all live so close to each other in these Brooklyn neighborhoods. They are assigned two to a car for rides home from the airport after road trips, provided by the Nets.

Who among us doesn’t know about car pooling? And taking an Uber? Or walking to our children’s school? Or going to the grocery store?

“I just feel like it’s… me and my wife talk about it, it’s almost like when we go to Manhattan, it’s kind of like Disney World,” Atkinson said. “Coming to Brooklyn, it’s just like real living. I love Manhattan as much as the next person, but we’re back to the real, the real. I don’t know if that makes sense, a real living atmosphere and environment. Which really fits with the work environment, right?

“And I think there’s something about walking, having lived in New York. It lifts your spirit. You think more, talk more.”

(Top photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

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