Section 15: Shifting Loyalties - NYTimes.com The Off the Dribble team was interested in learning about Nets fans now that the team is in Brooklyn. We plan to talk with fans at home games throughout the season and focus on Section 15, behind the east basket in the lower bowl. The Nets are growing on Michael Marcus and David Ramos, rather unexpectedly and somewhat quickly. Marcus and Ramos are old college friends, longtime Knicks fans and former season-ticket holders at Madison Square Garden. They said they had not given up on the Knicks so much as given up on the team's ownership. But at Barclays Center they have found more than a place to wait out the Dolans. "We're still Knicks fans, we just don't root for the ownership," Marcus said, citing the hiring of Isiah Thomas as a scout in 2010 as the point at which he was done. We came here wanting to watch good basketball. And we're even on the visiting side, if you notice. But we're falling in love with the product. It is the product as a whole - from the arena to the treatment of the fans to the roster - that has drawn them in. "Right now, this team has potential," Ramos said. They'll go over 50 games, and next year the next level. And there's not that many players not to like. They're likable. So likable that Marcus and Ramos found themselves rooting for the Nets when the Knicks came to Brooklyn. "We came here thinking we were going to cheer for the Knicks, but it became harder to do," Marcus said. We were both surprised. Marcus, a lawyer, and Ramos, who works in advertising, share their two season tickets at Barclays with a third friend. The move from the Knicks to the Nets, from Manhattan to Brooklyn, also allowed them to move from the 300 Section at the Garden to Section 15 at Barclays. Better seats, though, came with a different cost in a longer commute for Marcus and Ramos, both of whom live in Manhattan. That has not been the only adjustment in their shifting sports allegiance. Barclays Center also has a different feel than the Garden. "Uncertain," was how Marcus described the atmosphere at Barclays. People really don't know yet when it's O.K. to go nuts and when it's not. It doesn't have the feel of the Garden at playoff time. Veterans of playoff time at the Garden -- "We were there for everything," Ramos said. The John Starks dunk, the Reggie 3-pointers. I had the jacket, ready to go home, and it was happening in front of us. We were there." -- the two realize it will take time for the Brooklyn Nets to build a fan base, a championship contender and a home-court personality. "It's starting to get its own identity, which I think is important, but that takes time, it really does," Marcus said. But I do see, if you look around, I see a lot of kids here. And once they become Brooklyn fans, if the product is good it's going to become difficult for them to ever become Knicks fans. It might even be difficult for two longtime Knicks fans to leave their new home base.