Brooklyn Nets Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Brooklyn Nets trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Brooklyn Nets trivia quiz covers a nomadic franchise: the New Jersey Americans of 1967, the Long Island years and Julius Erving's two ABA championships, the invasion fee that forced his sale to Philadelphia, the Meadowlands, Dražen Petrović, the aborted Swamp Dragons rebrand, and Jason Kidd's back-to-back Finals runs. Then comes Brooklyn: Bruce Ratner, Mikhail Prokhorov and Jay-Z, the Barclays Center opener delayed by Hurricane Sandy, the Garnett–Pierce trade that handed Boston a decade of picks, Kenny Atkinson's rebuild, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden's short-lived Big Three, Joe Tsai, and the pick-hoarding reset under Jordi Fernández. Questions run from easy to hard with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under what name did the Nets franchise begin play in 1967?
New Jersey Americans
New Jersey Americans lasted one season: a move to Long Island in 1968 made them the New York Nets, a name picked because it rhymed with the Mets and the Jets.
Q 02Which current NBA team arrived from the ABA in the same 1976 merger as the Nets?
Denver Nuggets
Denver Nuggets: they had been the Denver Rockets until 1974 and renamed themselves ahead of a move to the NBA, where Houston already used that name.
Q 03Which Hall of Famer led the New York Nets to ABA championships in 1974 and 1976?
Julius Erving
Julius Erving arrived by trade in 1973 and the Nets won 25 more games than the season before, taking the ABA title in his first year with them.
Q 04To join the NBA, the Nets had to pay an 'invasion fee' of $4.8 million to which team?
New York Knicks
The New York Knicks' fee came on top of the NBA's own $3.2 million entry charge, and raising about $8 million in all forced the Nets to sell their best player.
Q 05Which team paid $3 million for the Nets' biggest star in 1976, sending the ABA champions to the NBA's worst record?
Philadelphia 76ers
The Philadelphia 76ers bought him a day before the season opened, after a salary dispute with the cash-strapped Nets could not be settled.
Q 06By his own account, who gave 'Dr. J' his 'Doctor' nickname?
A high-school friend
A high-school friend, Leon Saunders: he called Saunders 'the Professor', and Saunders answered by calling him 'the Doctor'.
Q 07Where did the Nets play for four seasons from 1977 while the Meadowlands arena was built?
Rutgers Athletic Center
Rutgers Athletic Center was a college arena: after leaving Long Island in 1977, the renamed New Jersey Nets shared the home floor of Rutgers University's own team.
Q 08Which Croatian sharpshooter starred for the Nets before dying in a car accident in Germany in June 1993?
Dražen Petrović
Dražen Petrović was 28 and coming off his best NBA season; flying back from a Croatia game, he left the plane at Frankfurt to travel on by car and was asleep when it crashed.
Q 09What did team president Jon Spoelstra try to rename the Nets in 1994 to shed their bad image?
New Jersey Swamp Dragons
New Jersey Swamp Dragons, a nod to the Meadowlands marshes, passed the league's vote 26-1; the lone no came from the Nets' own ownership, which killed the idea.
Q 10Which power forward, the 1982 Rookie of the Year, was the Nets' rebounding mainstay through the 1980s?
Buck Williams
Buck Williams made an instant difference: the Nets went from 24 wins to 44 in his rookie season, their first winning record since joining the NBA.
Q 11Whom did the Nets take first overall in the 2000 NBA draft?
Kenyon Martin
Kenyon Martin was dealt away in 2004 for three first-round picks, and months later the Nets sent two of them on in the trade that brought Vince Carter.
Q 12The 2001 trade that brought Jason Kidd to New Jersey sent which All-Star point guard to Phoenix?
Stephon Marbury
Stephon Marbury never reached the playoffs as a Net; with Kidd in his place the team went from 26 wins to 52 and its first NBA Finals in a single season.
Q 13Who swept the Nets in the 2002 NBA Finals?
Los Angeles Lakers
The Los Angeles Lakers finished a three-peat in four games, led by a Finals MVP from the Nets' own state: Shaquille O'Neal was born in New Jersey.
Q 21The Nets became the first major-league team in Brooklyn since which club left in 1957?
The Dodgers
The Dodgers left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season, and the Nets later honoured them with grey alternate jerseys that spelled Brooklyn in Dodger blue.
Q 22Why was the Nets' first regular-season game at Barclays Center, against the Knicks, postponed?
Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy struck days before the planned opener, so the first Brooklyn game came two nights later against another team; the Nets beat the Knicks in overtime when the game was finally played.
Q 23Which Nets centre was lost for the year to a broken foot after playing just 17 games of the 2013-14 season?
Brook Lopez
Q 14Which team beat the Nets in the 2003 NBA Finals?
San Antonio Spurs
The San Antonio Spurs won in six games, then tried to sign Kidd away as a free agent that summer; he turned them down and re-signed with New Jersey.
Q 15Which team traded Vince Carter to the Nets in December 2004?
Toronto Raptors
The Toronto Raptors' main return, Alonzo Mourning, refused to report and was bought out two months later without ever playing a game for them.
Q 16Which Mavericks guard came to the Nets in the February 2008 trade that sent Jason Kidd to Dallas?
Devin Harris
Devin Harris came with a retired player: Keith Van Horn, out of the NBA since 2006, was signed and added to the deal in name only so the salaries would match.
Q 17Which real-estate developer bought the Nets in 2004 with the intention of moving them to Brooklyn?
Bruce Ratner
Bruce Ratner wanted the team to anchor his Atlantic Yards project, but lawsuits and the financial crisis stalled the arena, and the move took eight years.
Q 18Which Russian billionaire bought a controlling stake in the Nets in a deal closed in 2010?
Mikhail Prokhorov
Mikhail Prokhorov ran for president of Russia against Vladimir Putin while he owned the team, finishing third in 2012 with about 8% of the vote.
Q 19Which rapper, a minority owner, announced in 2011 that the team would be the Brooklyn Nets?
Jay-Z
Jay-Z gave up his small stake in 2013 because he was launching the agency Roc Nation Sports, and NBA rules bar a team owner from also representing players.
Q 20Where did the Nets play their final two New Jersey seasons, 2010–12?
Prudential Center in Newark
Prudential Center in Newark, home of hockey's Devils, was a stopgap: lawsuits and the financial crisis had stalled the Nets' Brooklyn arena for years.
Brook Lopez was done by Christmas, yet a team that stood 10-21 on New Year's Eve finished 44-38 under rookie coach Jason Kidd and won a playoff series.
Q 24Which Celtics star was drafted third overall in 2016 with a pick Brooklyn surrendered in the 2013 Garnett–Pierce trade?
Jaylen Brown
Jaylen Brown came from Brooklyn's 2016 pick, and its 2017 pick was traded down for Jayson Tatum; together the two won Boston the 2024 title.
Q 25Which coach, hired in 2016, led the Nets' rebuild and left midway through the 2019–20 season?
Kenny Atkinson
Kenny Atkinson's first Nets team won 20 games and his third won 42 and made the playoffs, yet he was gone in March 2020, months after Durant and Irving signed.
Q 26Kevin Durant signed with the Nets in July 2019 having just suffered what injury in the Finals?
A torn Achilles
A torn Achilles came in the second quarter of his first game back from a calf strain, and it cost him the whole of his first season under contract in Brooklyn.
Q 27Which retired Hall of Fame point guard was hired as Nets head coach in 2020 with no coaching experience?
Steve Nash
Steve Nash, twice the NBA's MVP as a player, won only one playoff series in two seasons with Durant and Irving and was gone seven games into his third.
Q 28James Harden did what in his January 2021 Nets debut, a franchise first?
Recorded a triple-double
Recorded a triple-double: 32 points, 12 rebounds and 14 assists, two days after his trade demand took him from Houston to join Durant and Irving.
Q 29Which team beat the Nets' Big Three in Game 7 of a 2021 semi-final, after Durant's toe touched the three-point line?
Milwaukee Bucks
The Milwaukee Bucks won in overtime: Durant's shot with a second left would have taken the series as a three, but his foot was on the line and it only tied the game.
Q 30Which three-time All-Star did the Nets get from Philadelphia in the February 2022 trade for James Harden?
Ben Simmons
Ben Simmons had sat out the whole season in a standoff with the 76ers, and a back injury meant he never played for the Nets that season either.