If and when Mikhail Prokhorov becomes principal owner of the Nets, the team’s fortunes will change. That’s a no-brainer, but how?
A lot has been written about how a Prokhorov-owned Nets team would immediately be the front runner for Lebron James’ services, perhaps even a two-fer of top free agents would be bound for Brooklyn, minor investor Jay-Z introducing them to his home borough. Prokhorov’s cash will drop like confetti or flow like champagne. Choose your extravagant metaphor. Maybe that will happen, but the real story is the number of options the Nets would have with Prokhorov as owner. When you have money, you have options and when you have a LOT of money, you have a LOT of options…and Prokhorov has a LOT of money. Assuming Prokhorov would want to spend lavishly, and that is certainly his record in Russia–where his CSKA Moscow payroll regularly exceeded $50 million, there are a number of ways things could change. In fact, the Nets’ strategies could change quite quickly because the team has set in place several building blocks of team reconstruction: expiring contracts, good young players on rookie contracts
