Is this getting old? Are we spending too much time discussing whether or not the Nets will be better than the Knicks?

Just yesterday, Billy King said that the Nets are not concerned with the New York Knicks, despite the fact that Mikhail Prokhorov seems to be very concerned with James Dolan.

And last week, Shaquille O’Neal said that he thinks that the Knicks are better than the Nets and that New York City will always be a Knicks town.

Well, O’Neal’s colleague and fellow NBA Hall of Famer, Charles Barkley thinks otherwise.

Via The New York Daily News…

“Charles Barkley sees big things happening in New York this season. On the other side of the East River.

The TNT analyst and Hall Of Famer dubbed the Brooklyn Nets ‘the best team in New York,’ and predicts another frustrating year for the Carmelo Anthony-Amar’e Stoudemire experiment.

‘It’s not going to work, and it’s not going to click,’ Barkley said of the All-Star pairing. ‘I’m not a believer that a leopard can change its spots.’

‘They’re both very good offensive players — Carmelo is a great offensive player, Amar’e is a very good offensive player. But I don’t think all of a sudden they’re going to become great rebounders and great defenders,’ he added in his breakdown of the Atlantic division on NBA.com.”

The wait is almost over. NBA training camps are set to begin next week, and soon enough, we’ll get to see, first hand, which team draws first blood when they begin the NBA season against one another on November 1.

Moke Hamilton, SNYNets.com

At this point, it’s pointless to argue which team will be better. The bottom line is that the NBA’s Atlantic division will be one of the tougher in the league and neither the Nets or the Knicks will dominate the division, the conference, or each other. While Barkley’s comments about the Knicks are somewhat true, the quotes above ignore the fact that Mike Woodson and Glen Grunwald have brought in a bunch of defensive players to help the Knicks protect the rim and rebound. Dirk Nowitzki’s Mavericks have proven to us that you can win big as long as you protect your best player’s defensive deficiencies with other strong defensive players.

As far as the Nets are concerned, there is a lot of reason to be optimistic about what they’re coming into the season with. Their pieces are a more natural fit than the Knicks’ are, but to make it sound as though they will easily win 50 games and certainly be better than the Knicks is a bit of a stretch.

The bright side is that the season is right about to begin, so we can sit back and watch this rivalry begin and play out.