New Jersey Nets: From the Americans to New York to the Nets

The New Jersey Nets was one of the teams that belonged to the alternative professional basketball franchise, the American Basketball Association. During their stint with the ABA, the New Jersey Nets were called the New Jersey Americans although previous owner Arthur Brown wanted to call the team the New York Freighters at first. Pressure from the New York Knicks however forced the future New Jersey Nets to move to New Jersey from their Manhattan home and that was when they became the New Jersey Americans.

The name New Jersey Nets came after the team moved back to New Jersey after a short stint as the New York Nets when they were relocated to Long Island for a few years. Since the other popular teams in the area had rhyming names, namely football's Jets and baseball's Mets, the teams decided to change the name to "Nets" to mesh with the present team names in New York. Playing as the New York Nets, the New Jersey Nets won two ABA Championship titles, one in 1974 and another in 1976. In 1977, the team officially moved to the NBA due to a merger with the ABA and became the New Jersey Nets simply because the team was moved by its owner back to New Jersey.

The New Jersey Nets professional basketball team still has not won an NBA Championship title but has been consistently showing great improvements by winning four NBA Atlantic Division Titles from 2002 to 2005. The team also won two Eastern Conference titles, one in 2002 and the next one in 2003. When the Nets will win an NBA Championship title and when their players will be wearing an NBA Championship ring on their fingers remains to be seen as more and more NBA teams come up with amazing players to fill out their rosters.