so what, it was empty,(holiday shopping some of us are blessed to do) at least you could afford to go! count your blessings. i live in newark and i am blessed to have food on my plate. if your story had been on the homeless, and starving people in newark you would have masses of people that would have filled the beautiful prudential center, especially the ones who don't have jobs- grown men on welfare who really want to work not all of us are bad, go to william street in newark, (a few blocks from the beautiful prudential center)oh yeah the other office is on rector st., go there in the mornings to see the masses and take pictures of people lined up to sign for welfare this is every day! you know, i had a stroke in 2005, and i was on my job for 23 years, i also worked (at a newspaper) and lived in morris county, now iam blessed to be able to buy my medication, i was smart enough to write the govenor and ask about health care and i even tried to get foodstamps guess what! no help at all- i would love to go to a nj game, and i only live a couple blocks from the prudential center! oh yes - beautiful pictures! college photo's - please... if we can't take care of our own right here, how smart are they to even think of posting college teams around newark, oh yeah have you been to the nj bears- beautiful building a few blocks from broad st. train station. they also have there name and logo posted every where near there little stadium.

I was there on Friday and the crowd was a little bit larger, but still very sparse. I think we need to give the area some time. When the NYC populous realizes that tickets for events are about half the price of tickets to a MSG game, and the train ride is actually very reasonable, they will come.

I thought the arena was great. It is a pretty good place to play basketball. Let's give Seton Hall a season to build an audience among the locals and see how things turn out.

The hard-luck story of one person (even if it can be believed; a desperately poor person who nonetheless has Internet access) who was laid low by a stroke has nothing to do with the Arena or the condition of the city of Newark generally.

It will indeed take a while to build an audience for Prudential Center events that are as poorly publicized as the Legends Classic was, but over 200,000 people have visited in the Arena's first month. Only implicit in the blog writer's account and fotos is that Newark has some beautiful things, and people can attend events at the Prudential Center without being killed, maimed, or even robbed! -- so a lot of what they've been told about 'hellhole Newark' is absolutely false. It's too bad people have to divine that for themselves rather than see it stated expressly.

As for the crowd, or lack thereof, if there had been a New Jersey team in these games, Seton Hall or Rutgers, that would have been an entirely different story. Why would New Jerseyans (and New Yorkers, a quick train ride away) care about college basketball teams from New Mexico, Texas, West Virginia, and Tennessee? You put Duke against Rutgers, or Seton Hall against St. John's, and you've got a crowd.

I don't live in NYC or the area anymore, but ever since Mike Jarvis killed off St. John's, college basketball has been pretty much dead in the area. I wouldn't want to go to Newark without a uzi, but the arena looks nice, anyway, maybe next year they should try putting a local team into this tourney instead of 4 teams that mean nothing in NY.
It's not like the NIT had a big crowd either. MSG looked 60% empty.

At approximately 3:45 PM on Saturday I read in the Star Ledger about the Friday’s game(s) and saw that Texas was playing in the Championship that night. Since my 12 year old son favorite BB and Football teams are Texas (he wore his sweatshirt to the game) we jumped in my car with my wife and drove to Newark to see if we could get tickets.

This was our first trip to the Arena and we relied upon the signs to find our way to the arena. We had no problems in finding the arena or parking. I guess I’m glad the attendance was “low” because there was no traffic and we were able to park, buy tickets (great seats!) and get into our seats by 4:30PM.

Our experience was great, everyone from the ticket window to concession workers were polite and friendly and the place was awesome. Upon leaving there was sufficient police present so there was no reason to be nervous.

In my opinion, the lack of crowd is most likely due to the poor advertisement, not the reputation of Newark or the teams playing.

The only down side is that my son had such a good time that now he wants to go to a Devil’s game, talk about violence! (LOL)

In reference to the "poor person" having internet access.... there are places called libraries with free internet access. :)

At approximately 3:45 PM on Saturday I read in the Star Ledger about the Friday’s game(s) and saw that Texas was playing in the Championship that night. Since my 12 year old son favorite BB and Football teams are Texas (he wore his sweatshirt to the game) we jumped in my car with my wife and drove to Newark to see if we could get tickets.

This was our first trip to the Arena and we relied upon the signs to find our way to the arena. We had no problems in finding the arena or parking. I guess I’m glad the attendance was “low” because there was no traffic and we were able to park, buy tickets (great seats!) and get into our seats by 4:30PM.

Our experience was great, everyone from the ticket window to concession workers were polite and friendly and the place was awesome. Upon leaving there was sufficient police present so there was no reason to be nervous.

In my opinion, the lack of crowd is most likely due to the poor advertisement, not the reputation of Newark or the teams playing.

The only down side is that my son had such a good time that now he wants to go to a Devil’s game, talk about violence! (LOL)

What a silly story! Did you see how empty MSG was for the NIT champ. game? It was empty!! There were 4,300 fans for the Texas-Tenn game Sat night in Newark. UM, there were 2,400 for the Anaheim Classic champ game, and thats with USC playing there! All those teams that were playing also had their football teams in HUGE games! In Orlando, 2,400 for the champ game. Why not do a story on that? Why not do a story on MSG and how empty it was for Texas A&M-Ohio St? Answer that. Is it because the Rock is in Newark and you are on the bandwagon about it being there? How about Hannah Montana playing there 2 days and selling out? Devils averaging 15,300 fans, over 16,000 fans for every Bon JOvi show? Pathetic story with no reason to write it. Its a great arena, WVU fans were loving it Fri night which by the way had 5,310 fans, more than most tournaments this weekend. I like how you take a picture of the consolation game with 5 minutes to go with 1 of those teams being from New Mexico. Great media job.