Nets to Face Raptors in New Season Opener

Even the mighty Barclays Center must bow to Sandy.

Though structurally unharmed, the Barclays Center suffered a major blow Wednesday when Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the highly anticipated season opener between the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Knicks has been postponed. 

Nets CEO Brett Yormark said in a statement that tickets to Thurday's cancelled game would be honored at a later date, when the Nets-Knicks face-off is rescheduled. 

The Nets' opener will instead be pushed to Saturday's game against the Toronto Raptors, a disappointment to many fans looking forward to a heated inter-city match-up. 

"Opening the Barclays Center against the Toronto Raptors? That's got to be one of the 99 problems @JayZ was singing about," tweeted the Poughkeepsie Journal's Mike Benischek. 

Steve Kyler, a writer for USA Today Sports and the editor of Hoopsworld, also tweeted his dissatisfaction. 

"So the Nets after postponing opener versus Knicks, expected to open Barclays versus the Raptors... --- so glad I opted not to attend," he wrote. 

Despite the litany of reasons for the postponement—including a still-snarled transit system and the fact that much of the city remains without power—Bloomberg himself expressed dismay that the game could not go on as planned.

"I'm sorry about the game. I was going to take my daughters to it," he said. 

"It's a great stadium and it was going to be a great game."