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February 17, 2010
Future NJ Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov avoids questions about basketball, bemoans fate of Russian biathlon team
The Star-Ledger
by Dave D'Alessandro
Dave D'Alessandro flies all the way to Vancouver to interview Mikhail Prokhorov, only to discover that a Nets victory is more likely than a Proky scoop.
“I hoped to get good results here. For the time being, we are not very lucky,” the oligarch said in careful but inexpert English, after his women failed to medal in the 10-kilometer pursuit.
The future Nets owner is also the president of the Russian Biathlon Union, so we played along.
...So this made it a bad morning for Mikky. He wanted a medal. Some wrote that he demanded a medal. In one interview, the author inferred that heads would roll on the coaching staff if the team didn’t repeat its recent success it had in a competition in Slovenia.
“In our (best) discipline, the relay, we should sure will get a medal,” Prokhorov predicted.
By now, you can tell that we hadn’t a clue how to break the ice with a billionaire. Language was an issue — our fault, we too often talk in idioms. So we had a cordial but mostly pointless discussion for 15 minutes, standing just off this course carved into the middle of the Coast Mountains, because as soon as he heard our name and affiliation, up went the preconditions:
“No basketball. I cannot comment. The lawyers told me I cannot speak,” he said. “As soon as deal is ... closed, I have summit.”
NoLandGrab: The failures of the Russian biathletes should prepare Prokhorov well for ownership of the Nets.
Posted by eric at February 17, 2010 9:45 PM