There is no place like home, and the Lightning hopes that is the case as they will be playing their first ABA home game at the Brooklyn Stuy Dome in Brooklyn New York. Coming off of back to back losses in their preliminary season in the ABA, the Lightning are looking for their first win.
This will be the first ABA game in the Brooklyn Stuy Dome since the former ABA team the Brooklyn Skyrockets played there. Both sides are excited about the opportunity to play in Brooklyn as they both have players from the borough.
“We are very pleased to represent the borough of Brooklyn, we are honored to be the ABA team to represent this city,” said Lightning owner/coach Willie Negron. “We are looking forward to it we like playing in the Stuy Dome, I do have a few players who are from Brooklyn, so it allows some of their family to attend the game so hopefully we will have some supporters there too,” said Holy Flames owner Geovanni Concepcion.
The Lightning will be playing the second of a home and home series with their crosstown rivals the Bronx Holy Flames. Both teams added some players to their rosters in their last game, and both owners have made it clear the changes will continue going into Sunday’s game.
“The roster has been set for the home opener on Sunday and again the analogy of the hardware store, I was able to go to the hardware store and pick up some veteran supplies (players),” said coach Negron. “I want to reiterate to the fans of the Lightning nation that we want to try and put the best product out there for the fans,” he added.
As for the Holy Flames, a lot of the players who played in last weeks game were returning players who had been with the Holy Flames program before. The decision to bring them back was about what is best for the team.
“We had a lot of rookies, and we just wanted to show them the right way to play, show them that if they play unselfish everybody gets to eat, and you still win no matter what,” said Concepcion. “The culture the veteran guys brought back with them, supporting their teammates helped us get the win. With the rookies seeing how the veterans act with each other and not sweating the little things and encourage your teammate that really helped us get over the hump in that game,” said Holy Flames general manager Shavon Wright.
The Lightning has done a great job scoring the ball lead by Andre Martin and Chris St Rose. But with the Lightning looking for the first win of their preliminary season defense will have to pick up for them to pull this one out. Last game was close early but got out of hand because of turnovers and defense.
“The Lightning can score, we are capable of scoring we have scored 100 plus in both games. But again we have to emphasize defense first, we will have multiple defenses throughout a particular quarter, and if the defensive end holds up we should prevail,” said coach Negron. “One of the rules of thumb is a conference game at home is a must-win for the New York Lightning, you must protect your own home court,” he added.
The Lightning will not be the only focusing more on defense as the Holy Flames feel they could have done a better good defending and not allowing second-chance points. With the additions of Charles Jones and Bernard Cherry, the Lightning was able to hurt the Holy Flames on the offensive rebounds.
“It was a good game it was productive, but you can tell the rust was showing they missed a lot of shots, missed some assignments on defense that hurt us on some plays,” said Concepcion. “This Sunday we are looking to keep the Lightning under a hundred points, the defense is definitely going to be at the top of the discussion this week at practice, so yeah they are not scoring more than 100 points,” said Wright.
The Lightning will get their chance to get in the win column in a home game at 3:00 p.m. Sunday, February 11th at the Brooklyn Stuy Dome in the Brooklyn, New York. The game will be streaming live on i95 Sports and Entertainment Network.
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