How the Nets are bringing college football helmet stickers to the hardwood

Reporters who attended Thursday’s Nets signifier successful Brooklyn were greeted by a unusual sight.

Spread crossed 3 shelves connected the acold extremity of the court sat 18 achromatic shot helmets with achromatic facemasks. “Brooklyn” was written crossed the broadside of each helmet successful the team’s fancy, old-school font.

No, the helmets were not reserved for an upcoming crossover lawsuit with Giants and Jets players. The helmets are being utilized by the Nets arsenic a unsocial instrumentality for culture-building purposes.

“I’m going to support it a secret, but if idiosyncratic other wants to archer you, they can,” Cam Thomas said.

Luckily, caput manager Jordi Fernandez was consenting to explicate what shot instrumentality had to bash with Nets basketball.

Fernandez credited his assistants for the idea. Each subordinate connected the roster has their ain helmet, and determination is besides a squad helmet. Like successful football, players get helmet stickers for adhering to violative and antiaircraft staples, but besides for idiosyncratic milestones and achievements. It is simply a chill mode for coaches to admit players for what they bash for the team.

“After games, radical person chains, but we person those helmets, and this is large to have,” Dennis Schröder said.

The past of helmet stickers is simply a spot complicated. According to sportdecals.com, it each started with Ohio State shot trainer Ernie Biggs successful the autumn of 1968. He was looking for ways to motivate his players and chose to springiness them a sticker for lesser-celebrated in-game achievements, similar throwing a cardinal artifact successful the 4th fourth of a necktie game. Other high-major programs similar Michigan, Florida State and Georgia adopted the conception implicit the years. It remains an important shot inclination today.

However, immoderate assertion that the signifier of awarding helmet stickers really began with Jim Young, a erstwhile adjunct manager astatine Miami successful 1965. In his publication “Rutgers Football: A Gridiron Tradition successful Scarlet,” Michael Pellowski wrote that erstwhile antiaircraft backs manager Dewey King was 1 of the archetypal to grant helmet stickers successful 1961.

Now the inclination has someway recovered its mode into hoops via Fernandez and his staff.

“You tin get stickers for being truly bully successful the value room,” Fernandez explained. “You tin get stickers for doing your shooting metric drills and truthful forth. It’s not conscionable for the guys who play a batch of minutes, truthful we effort to bash it successful a mode wherever everybody tin get them. Some helmets volition look similar they person much stickers than others, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is you tin work; you tin get them successful antithetic ways.”

And which Nets subordinate has accumulated the astir stickers truthful far, you ask?

“I don’t know. I’m up there, though,” Schröder said. “I gotta enactment immoderate connected close now, but I got a batch of stickers. I privation to person a batch more.”

The helmet stickers are conscionable the latest illustration of Fernandez’s willingness to deliberation extracurricular the container erstwhile it comes to establishing a unsocial civilization successful Brooklyn. During grooming camp, the Nets had regular escaped propulsion contests that utilized a golf-like scoring system.

“It’s different,” Schröder said. “I mean, I’ve been successful the league for 12 years. Never had a grooming campy similar we had before. That was by acold the hardest. I’m utilized to it due to the fact that I’m from Europe. How we bash grooming camps implicit determination is two-a-days with portion and so, I’m utilized to it, but the structure, conscionable coming successful and mounting the code early, adjacent successful the summertime and bringing things successful similar that, wherever everybody buys into it and embraces it means a lot. For us, for the group, for everybody having amusive with it arsenic well.”