Встретите сети! (That’s ‘Meet the Nets’ in Russian)
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Mikhail Prokhorov, a 44-year-old nickel-mining magnate, onetime stakeholder in the CSKA Moscow basketball team, and the richest man in Russia, agreed this afternoon to pay $200 million for an 80 percent stake in the New Jersey Nets. The deal, which is pending league approval, would make him the first non-Canadian foreigner to own an NBA team and, best of all, boost the chances of the Nets moving to Brooklyn. While Glenn Beck can't be happy about this, preliminary reports suggest that Prokhorov will be awesome in a Max Zorin kind of way. Yesterday, he wrote on his blog that he aims for the "placement of Russia's leading coaches and managers in the NBA." (Lawrence Frank, call your agent.) He also boasted that he was negotiating to take over the team at a "symbolic price." Wait, there's more. He has reportedly said that he will be "the only NBA owner who can dunk." And, perhaps best of all, his blog includes video of him doing a backflip on a jet ski! The Russians are coming, and we like it.