For 35 Years, an Often Sorry State of Affairs Months after Mount St. Helens erupted in May 1980, the New Jersey Nets ignited a blast of their own at what was then known as the Rutgers Athletic Center. Timing it to a visit by the Portland Trail Blazers - a franchise based about 50 miles southwest of the volcano - the Nets commemorated the event by handing out key chains filled with authentic Mount St. Helens ash. So they thought, or claimed. The architect of the stunt was the team's promotions manager, Howard Freeman, who had commissioned a local school's shop class to build a six-foot papier-mâché volcano. "We had traded for Maurice Lucas the year before from Portland, and he said he had a bunch of Mount St. Helens ash," Freeman said in a recent interview. Honestly, it could have come from his fireplace, for all we knew. Triggered by a hired dwarf wielding a fire extinguisher loaded with a chemical compound, the makeshift volcano discharged without a hitch during halftime of a Nets overtime victory on Feb. 20, 1981. It was, in retrospect, perfect imagery for the Nets" 35-year run in New Jersey, which will end on Monday night at Prudential Center in Newark. Many eruptions, little fallout on a largely indifferent fan base. While often bad, the Nets were never boring. Be it in Piscataway, East Rutherford or Newark, they were a reporter's dream team - uncommonly accessible and forever afflicted with a case of arrested development. From the time the Nets returned from Long Island to the Garden State - where they made their debut as the Americans a decade earlier in the American Basketball Association - an explosion, or implosion, could occur anytime, anywhere. October 1977: In the fourth quarter of a road game against the Buffalo Braves, Mike Weber of The Star-Ledger took pity on me, a greenhorn covering his first road game. He leaned over and whispered, "Keep your eye on Averitt after the game." William Averitt, known as Bird, who had played the previous season with the Braves, was one of four left-handed Nets guards. After scoring 18 points in defeat, he was promptly arrested, cited for writing a fraudulent check and for unpaid tickets related to letting his German shepherd roam a Buffalo suburb. Hence, my first article for The New York Post with a glamorous dateline was about the Nets" posting bond for Averitt - and not even the racy tabloid rated this news all that sensational. It was just the Nets, the strapped team that had introduced itself to the N.B.A. by selling the contract of Dr. J, Julius Erving, to the Philadelphia 76ers. On the wrong side of the Hudson, with a suburban aura that never quite fit the so-called city game, maybe it never really mattered what the Nets did on the court. Their best years (excluding two A.B.A. championships), making consecutive N.B.A. finals in 2002 and 2003 with the crowd-pleasing Jason Kidd, did not make them a bigger draw than the establishment Knicks. But they tried every which way to lure fans, starting with the late "70s slogan "Thataway to Piscataway." They staged giveaways, contests, everything Freeman could think of short of a seat on the bench next to the coach. For those early home games at Rutgers, players would take turns participating in a halftime shooting duel with fans, with Freeman compensating the player by writing a modest check to his favorite charity. "Who should I make it out to?" he asked Super John Williamson, a high-scoring but impulsive guard who once - in full view of reporters - flung an ice pack at the head of General Manager Charlie Theokas after reading in a newspaper that a lesser player was making more money. "Make it out to John Williamson," he told Freeman. "No, Supe," Freeman said. What charity? "Bertha Williamson," he said, referring to his wife. A Legacy of Controversy