Nets Move to Brooklyn With Legitimacy in Sight They have wandered the greater metropolitan area like dribbling migrants for 45 seasons, playing in seven different arenas, none of them in what could be called a choice professional basketball location. Since 2004, the Nets have been lame ducks and losers in largely indifferent New Jersey, waiting through lawsuits, construction delays and the worst real estate crash in decades for the opportunity to finally unpack in New York City - their intended home at birth in 1967. Few took them seriously, and many had good reason to believe that their characteristic bad karma would follow them to Brooklyn, if they ever made it. Lo and behold, their dream of laying roots in the mass-transit-rich Atlantic Yards is happening, and the odds that the Nets will finally find requited love have improved. The arena is all but built. The star point guard is staying. And the Nets - the first major professional sports team to call Brooklyn home since the Dodgers, and the first to hit the city in 50 years - might actually be capable of taking the borough, if not yet the city, by storm. "They've got a squad now; they've got a squad," said James Robinson, 25, who works in a sneaker store not far from the arena, his tone suggesting amazement. A week ago they had no team; now they've got a team. And an address at last perhaps worthy of a good Nets team. "In Jersey, they were outsiders looking in," the Brooklyn-born-and-bred Chris Mullin said of the Nets. When you're in the city, you're a destination. Throughout their troubled history in the National Basketball Association - the team did win two championships in the old American Basketball Association - the Nets have been known more for losing stars than for cultivating or keeping them. To afford the payments required to join the N.B.A. in 1976 and compete in Knicks territory, they sold Julius Erving, a future Hall of Famer, to the Philadelphia 76ers. Jason Kidd led the Nets to successive N.B.A. finals in 2002 and 2003 and later was traded to Dallas. But when a Twitter posting by Deron Williams on Tuesday implied that he would accept the Nets" five-year, $100 million offer to lead them into Brooklyn for the 2012-13 season - on the heels of the team's acquisition of the All-Star guard Joe Johnson - it was as if the franchise had washed itself clean of its troubled past while crossing the Hudson. Upon buying the team in 2010 from the real estate developer Bruce C. Ratner and partnering with him in building Barclays Center, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, a Russian billionaire, promised to make the Nets a champion within five years. They are not at that level yet, though hopes remain of trading for Orlando's disgruntled center, Dwight Howard, who has asked for a trade to Brooklyn. Still, the union of Williams and Johnson gives the Nets a formidable backcourt in an increasingly guard-driven league. The Nets have also fortified their roster by re-signing Gerald Wallace and signing forward Mirza Teletovic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the top scorers in Europe. They will match any offer for center Brook Lopez, a restricted free agent, who is the primary chip in their long-shot bid for Howard. But it was Williams's decision to stay after the Nets banked their foreseeable future on him that instantly established elusive franchise legitimacy. It was also a vindicating outcome for the team's general manager, Billy King, who has at least made the Nets a strong playoff contender for their debut in Kings County. "Today he's a genius, but last week a lot of us were calling him something else," said Robert Liff, a longtime Nets season-ticket holder, referring to the national narrative that Williams would stay only if the Nets could acquire Howard. Liff, 53, is that rarest of New Jersey Nets fans (a relative rarity in itself) in that he has renewed his two tickets for next season in Brooklyn. With a business that he operates from home in Manalapan, N.J., he is planning to drive to a commuter train station in New Jersey and take the subway from New York's Pennsylvania Station into Brooklyn for Nets home games. He is far from bitter about the Nets" move, having grown up in Brooklyn, and he believes the borough and surrounding areas will embrace the team far more than any other home it has had. "They never drew in Jersey," Liff said. I actually was waiting for the move because I knew they would finally spend the money to get the athletes. While Liff's commute to watch the revitalized Nets became longer and more expensive, Herb Turetzky's will be the most heartening of his startlingly long tenure as the Nets" official scorer - dating to their debut in 1967 in Teaneck as the New Jersey Americans. Nate Schweber contributed reporting.