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By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Daily
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The Brooklyn Blackout basketball team presented its final picks for the club’s premier roster on Sunday and is on track to play its debut game in a pre-season match against Jersey next week.
“Our first pre-season game is next week, so we probably won’t be able to get more than two practices in before then,” said coach Marc Cook.
The Brooklyn Blackout may not have any matches, or even a practice session under its belt, but owner Onez Onassis is content that he’s got all the talent he needs to run the American Basketball Association and bring a championship trophy to its home court at Aviator — perhaps even before the borough’s other basketball team manages to net an NBA title at the Barclays Center.
“I feel like we definitely have a championship contender on our hands,” Onassis said. “No question.”
Part of club’s confidence comes from the fact that its prime recruiting ground is New York City, a basketball Mecca, and the majority of the team’s new roster hails from Brooklyn.
Beyond that, half of the Blackout’s 14 teammates have played with or against each other in either a college or tournament setting, an edge that coach Cook thinks will afford the team some momentum as the untried squad is swept into the season.
“Even though Brooklyn’s a big place, the basketball community is pretty small, so a lot of these guys have played together,” said Cook. “It’s not something we were expecting, so it came as a pleasant surprise.”
As Cook turns his attention towards molding the new team into winning club, Onassis and partner Neal Booker are busy crafting a community outreach program which aims to keep kids out of trouble through sports.
“We’re going to be heavy on our community activities,” Onassis said. “We’re going to work with the school systems, we’ve got a reading program for the elementary schools, an anti-bullying campaign for the middle school kids, and a ‘no drugs, no guns, no gangs’ program for the high schools.”
At this point, it appears the only thing left to see is whether the team can perform when it counts. That and — perhaps even more crucially — what the Blackout owners settle on for team mascot.
“That’s the hard part — figuring out a mascot,” said Onassis.
No word on whether the Brooklyn Night is available to moonlight.
