Picture courtesy of A View From My Seat, which lets users upload photos of the sightlines at various arenas. If the $255 tickets selling on StubHub for section 225 (pictured above) strike you as a bit steep, why not move slightly to the left, over to the cozy confines of section 226, and pay only $231?
A steal! These are the price quoted on StubHub, but, predictably, Ticketmaster (which has a deal with the majority of NBA teams, including the Nets, in an effort to cut into StubHub's market share) isn't offering anything much cheaper: the best deal over there—if you're willing sit in stratospherically high in the air—is $290 for four tickets in section 214, including fees and taxes. You can see approximately what the view from Section 214 looks like here; if you look closely, you can sort of tell there are people on the court.
There are a lot of reasons that Thursday night's opener against the Knicks is a hot ticket: it's the first regular season professional sporting event in the new arena, it's against an ostensible intracity rival, and of course, sports are back in Brooklyn after a 55-year absence. Those considerations don't even pertain to the actual team, which has a chance to be pretty good this year three seasons removed from going 12-70, and after five seasons of missing the playoffs.
And there are also a lot of reasons why the Islanders chose to move into the Barclays Center, foremost among them, Nassau County residents voting down a tax plan that would have built a new arena in the area. Still, this is why you move 23 miles west: find the right home, and people will pay out the ass just for the privilege of seeing your team live, even if they can't actually see the team at all.