Nets Reportedly to Hold 'Swamp Dragons' Night to Honor Nickname Change Considered in 1990s

The Brooklyn Nets are still in the midst of an ongoing rebuild, but they reportedly have plans for special promotions that should keep fans interested.

Per NBA insider Zach Lowe, the Nets will be holding a Swamp Dragons night on Jan. 29 as part of a series of "eras nights" celebrating the franchise's history. The team nearly rebranded to the Swamp Dragons in the 1990s before ultimately choosing to continue on as the Nets.

In 2016, Lowe detailed an oral history of how the Nets almost became known as the Swamp Dragons. The name change was considered due to the team's status as the league's punching bag with eight losing seasons between 1990 and 2000.

"The Dragon came up right away, but we needed something to identify it locally," former team president Jon Spoelstra told Lowe. "I was sitting in my office with Jim Lampariello, our vice president, and I just said, 'Every time I look out the window here, I see this swamp. And every time I think of swamps, I think of swamp rats. What about that?' He just said, 'I don't think that's very nice. What about Swamp Dragons?' I loved it. Dragons are mythical, and fun."

However, when Spoelstra and design expert Tom O'Grady presented the idea to then-NBA commissioner David Stern, they immediately received pushback.

"David told me, 'This is the stupidest f--king idea I've ever heard,'" Spoelstra recalled.

Still, Stern allowed the Nets to move forward with their rebranding plans, first needing all seven of the team's owners to agree before getting a supermajority of the league's other 27 owners to approve the change. The Board of Governors voted 26-1 to make the change, but the one dissenting vote caused a major problem.

"David called me screaming, 'What the f--- is going on?' I asked what he was screaming about. He told me the vote came in, 26-1, in our favor. Well, that's terrific. What's the problem?" Spoelstra said. "He told me: 'No, that isn't terrific, because the one dissenting team was you -- the Nets.' We voted against our own name change. I thought he was kidding. If your own team votes no, you can't go ahead with something like this."

It turns out that David Gerstein, one of the Nets' seven owners, backed out at the last minute after rethinking his vote, though he claimed that his fellow owners also agreed to reverse course.

"I don't recall the vote, but we all thought it was inappropriate in the end," Gerstein said. "The name just wasn't right. I mean, would they be the Brooklyn Swamp Dragons today? The rest of the league would have done whatever we wanted, but we decided collectively to vote against it."

"I always thought David [Gerstein] was the Nervous Nellie of the group," Spoelstra said. "He's a terrific guy, though. After David [Stern] called me, I finally got [Gerstein] on the phone, and tried to get him to reverse his vote. He said he had just gotten nervous, and couldn't vote for it. Cold feet. I didn't even know they rotated votes."

Still, the lore of the Swamp Dragons lives on, and the Nets will celebrate the idea later this season. The "eras nights" should provide fans with some excitement in another year where Brooklyn will likely be near the bottom of the league.