Mini-Sly is the Man
By: katypolansky | Category: Mascots
So I finally went to a Nets game in person. It appears I brought them good luck because they absolutely destroyed the Hornets in Friday night's game. While the Nets have been the butt of everyone’s jokes this year I think they are going to be good in the future.
Overall I enjoyed my fan experience. The Izod Center is clearly an older facility that is lacking in many of the modern arenas found in most NBA cities. Obviously this won’t be a huge problem in the future because the Nets are moving to the Prudential Center next season and theoretically to Brooklyn sometime soon after. Over the next few weeks I’ll post different notes and observation from the game to this blog.
My highlight of the night was the discovery of the Nets “Mini” Mascot. The Nets main mascot is named Sly. The mini mascot is named Mini-Sly. Watching him run, if you want to call it that, around the court and cheer was nothing short of glorious. I was also amazed by how many people tracked Mini-Sly down to get their picture taken with him. Typically when in an arena a mascot will get his picture taken with fans, but those fans are almost exclusively kids. That was not the case with Mini-Sly. I saw at least 30 adults get their pictures taken with him. The greatest part about all of this from a franchise standpoint is that adults tend to do something with their pictures. For instance they might print them out and frame them in their home or post them to their Facebook or Twitter accounts. This is fantastic from the Nets standpoint because it spreads their branding way above and beyond the game itself. It also gets people thinking about the Nets for something other than losing basketball games.
