NEW YORK — Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the game between the Knicks and Nets scheduled for Thursday night at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn has been postponed after damage from Hurricane Sandy.
Though the NBA had said Tuesday night the game would go on as planned, Bloomberg asked the league that it be called off.
The Barclays Center sits above a subway station and commuter rail terminal and with most of mass transit still out in New York, transportation to the game would have been difficult.
There is no word yet on the Knicks’ game scheduled for Friday at Madison Square Garden against Miami. The Nets are scheduled to host Toronto on Saturday night.
The league said Tuesday it was still assessing games for later in the week. Bloomberg said the city will work with the league to provide extra buses to Saturday’s game in case the subways are not yet operational.
The usual NBA policy on the status of a game is to play it if both teams and the three referees can make it to the arena. That wouldn’t have been a problem, one of the reasons the league originally planned to play as scheduled.
However, the league also wanted to be sensitive to it being the Nets’ first game, televised to a national TV audience on TNT, and not wanting the team’s big event to be one that was largely empty.
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