Mary Altaffer
The NBA's nomadic New Jersey Nets have an unlikely champion in their new owner, Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who vows to use his know-how and deep pockets to breathe life into the moribund franchise.
Prokhorov takes over a team that was a league-worst 12-70 last season, but the towering 6-foot-7 tycoon is confident he can create a buzz with the team that is headed to a new arena in Brooklyn in two years.
"We will have the desire to win that is unmatched anywhere in the league," Prokhorov, the world's 39th richest man according to Forbes Magazine, told reporters.
"A little bit of luck, a little bit of money, and we go straight to the top."
Promising to turn the Nets into a global team that will command a fan base stretching from New Jersey to Brooklyn to Moscow and across Asia, Prokhorov said he would take advantage of being $22-million under the salary cap to pursue free agents this summer.
"I am pretty sure I can convince the very best of the best that the Nets is the place they need to be," he said.
Bringing the Nets to a New York home in the borough of Brooklyn, where a rabid fan base once embraced baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers, is key to Prokhorov's plan.
"The slogan for Brooklyn is it's home for everyone from everywhere," the 45-year-old Prokhorov noted about the diverse ethnic composition of the community.
"We are going to create and build a global franchise to sell all around the world. I think I have a competitive advantage compared to other owners."
Disadvantages have plagued the Nets since they were born in 1967 as the New Jersey Americans, the New York-area team in the old American Basketball Association that played in a converted armory in Teaneck and averaged less than 1,000 fans a game.
Playing deep in the shadow of the NBA's New York Knicks, they moved to an arena in Long Island, put New York in the team name and changed the nickname to the Nets to rhyme with the established baseball Mets and football Jets.
The glory days arrived with high-flying forward Julius "Dr. J" Erving who joined the club as a 23-year-old in 1973 and promptly led the Nets to the ABA title and another one two years later.
That thrilling success helped forge a merger that put the Nets and three other ABA teams into the NBA. It cost Nets owner Roy Boe $8 million -- $3.2-million to the NBA and $4.8-million to the Knicks as territorial compensation.
It also cost Boe his best player and set back the Nets as the cash-strapped owner sold Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers for $3 million.
The Nets went from ABA champions to 22-60 in the NBA after a move back to New Jersey, this time to Rutgers University in Piscataway, 40 miles from Manhattan, as they waited for a new arena to be built in the Meadowlands.
See-saw decades took them from NBA doormats to contenders and back again, but the Nets never lost second-class citizen status compared to the Knicks.
Now the team is moving to a temporary home in Newark until Brooklyn's Barclays Center is completed. They are also busy shopping for a new coach and new general manager while trying to lure free agents.
Prokhorov predicted his Nets, with building blocks in impressive young centre Brook Lopez and point guard Devin Harris, would make the playoffs next year despite picking third in the NBA draft.
The Nets lost the top choice in the draft lottery to the Washington Wizards but Prokhorov said luck can arrive in strange ways.
"A few years ago there is a player who was drafted third and he did pretty good in his career, and his name is Michael Jordan," the ever optimistic Prokhorov said. "Maybe you've heard about him."