The ACC’s return to Brooklyn is a litmus test for its own internal divides

The last time the ACC went to Brooklyn, there were ads all over the place — on subways and buses — for a conference basketball tournament. Just not the ACC tournament. New York City, in March, belongs to the Big East and Madison Square Garden. The ACC, in 2017 and 2018, was just another Big Apple tourist.

How people in the ACC feel about that Brooklyn experience sums up the persistent divide between the legacy ACC and the conference the ACC became in the two great waves of expansion, in 2004 and 2013, way more than the possibility of moving the conference office out of Greensboro ever could.

For the newcomers, playing the tournament in New York reminds them of the loud and rowdy late Manhattan nights of their days in the Big East, even if it’s not at MSG.

For the holdovers, it’s a waste of a perfectly good basketball tournament that could be played somewhere people actually care about it.

For those in neither camp, like Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner, it’s harder to pin down.

“We’ve been to Brooklyn before and it’s been a good atmosphere,” Pastner said. “But I don’t know if it’s the same as doing it every year in Greensboro. I understand things change and you have to adapt, I get all that. It’s going to continue to move, like the Super Bowl or the Final Four, where it’s city by city. That’s just the way it is.”

Either way, the ACC is going back to Brooklyn this week, in what’s probably another de facto referendum on its future as a tournament site after going there twice with mixed results. The basketball was outstanding. The atmosphere within Barclays was good, especially on Friday and Saturday. The impact of being in New York, not so much. With the teams staying in Manhattan and the hubbub around the Big East at MSG, the ACC felt like an afterthought in Brooklyn.

‘Is this going to work?’

Perhaps no one is caught between the two worlds as much as Mike Brey, the Notre Dame coach who grew up a Maryland fan and worked as an assistant for Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. Like any Syracuse or Pittsburgh fan, he loves the idea of “waking up the echoes” of the Big East tournament at MSG, of bringing ACC basketball to the big city.

“That’s the one thing I miss the most not being in the Big East,” Brey said. “Last time we were there, before, there was anxiety by the league, ‘Is this going to work?’ and I think it was really good. I thought the fan bases from Tobacco Road and the South, everybody was worried about, ‘Oh, they wouldn’t come to New York,’ but they were all there and they had a great time. I tried to tell ACC people, I’m telling you, from my Big East tournament experience, your fan base is going to love it.”

But Brey, as well as anyone, knows what’s missing. The USGA did a survey of pro golfers a few years back and one of the biggest takeaways was that where they win their U.S. Open matters to them — they’d rather win at Pinehurst or Pebble Beach than Chambers Bay or Erin Hills, and that changed how the USGA looked at future sites. Notre Dame won its only ACC championship in Greensboro, and even Brey admits it meant more there.

“It mattered, big time,” Brey said. “For us to win the ACC championship, in Greensboro, on Tobacco Road, and more importantly to go through Duke on a Friday night and Carolina on a Saturday, there’s no asterisk on that one, baby. Last year’s tournament, isn’t there an asterisk on that? Whatever, whatever. There ain’t no asterisk on that. It took me a year, educating our fans, do you really understand the power of going through those two in Greensboro to get it?”

When the tournament is in Greensboro, and to a lesser but still very significant extent, Washington or Charlotte, it’s the only show in town. Life comes to a halt when the ACC is playing, interest rooted in decades and generations when the ACC tournament was the sporting event of the year, before the Panthers and Hornets and Hurricanes were even a pipe dream.

‘If it was in the Garden would it be better? Of course.’

Walk out of the building in Brooklyn into the hustle and bustle of the city and there’s no hint that the ACC tournament is even happening. Former UNC coach Roy Williams tells a famous story about his Manhattan hotel bellman asking him, in 2017, what he was doing in New York. That doesn’t happen in Charlotte or Greensboro or Washington. Especially when UNC and Duke meet in the semis, as they did that year.

“In Greensboro, the whole town turns out for the tournament,” Williams said. “There’s nothing going on. There’s almost no one in Greensboro that doesn’t know the ACC tournament is there. So you know, yes, there are great things in New York, they have great restaurants, they have great things going on, but it’s a pretty special place to have it in Greensboro.”

It’s not just that Brooklyn isn’t Greensboro. It’s also not Manhattan. The latent Big East nostalgia for the old tournament isn’t just about being in New York, it’s about playing at Madison Square Garden, the mecca of basketball, an arena that truly does have the kind of historical significance and inherent atmosphere as the Greensboro Coliseum in a way the Barclays Center does not.

If the ACC were headed to MSG, even the most dedicated legacy ACC fan would be excited about the prospect. But it is not. The Big East has MSG locked down through 2028.

“If it was in the Garden would it be better? Of course. There’s no place like MSG,” said Pittsburgh coach Jeff Capel, who grew up in Fayetteville and played at Duke. “But I think Brooklyn has been very good for us.”

The Big Ten, in 2018, played its tournament a week early to play it in MSG, before the Big East. While the ACC contemplated trying that at one point in the past, it is not on the agenda under new commissioner Jim Phillips, who was a part of that experiment as the athletic director at Northwestern.

At this point, when it comes to ACC hoops in the city, it’s Brooklyn or nothing.

Greensboro, Washington up next

The ACC will go to Greensboro in 2023 — repayment for the pandemic-shortened 2020 tournament —and Washington in 2024, and then the field is open. There appears to be an informal consensus for some sort of rotation that focuses on Charlotte and Washington, with their downtown NBA arenas surrounded by development, with forays to Greensboro and Brooklyn mixed in. Maybe Atlanta or Tampa will get back into the mix, or a wild card like playing the 75th tournament in 2028 in Raleigh, with the Tuesday games at Reynolds Coliseum.

As for New York, what happens with MSG in 2029 and beyond is anyone’s guess, but the Big East will certainly defend its dates to the virtual death.

“The Garden is legendary,” N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said. “I won’t say (Brooklyn) it’s a newer version of the Garden, that would probably upset someone if I said that. But it’s completely different. It’s a great place to play. Both venues are great. One is a legendary place to play and the other will be legendary someday.”

Either way, the tournament in Brooklyn is a part of the ACC now, like Syracuse or Notre Dame (except in football!) or Boston College. Perhaps it’s up to the ACC tournament to make its Barclays visits meaningful, rather than the other way around.

This story was originally published March 6, 2022 at 5:45 AM.

Luke DeCock

The News & Observer

Luke DeCock is a former journalist for the News & Observer.