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May 19, 2010
AY resumes as sports story: Prokhorov era begins with a championship pledge, lottery bump, Boomberg welcome, eerie echo of Gehry
Atlantic Yards Report
Atlantic Yards, as it was for so many months after word of the project emerged in July 2003 and the official announcement in December 2003, has again become a sports story, with news of the Nets and their colorful billionaire owner absorbing pages and pixels.
"Colorful billionaire owner?" Did Norman Oder bother to watch that video he posted? It's like watching (white) paint dry.
Despite the best chance at the first pick, given their league-worst record, the Nets unluckily got the third pick. That means they almost surely won't draft can't-miss prospect John Wall (subject of scenarios in which free agent superstar LeBron James is lured as a package), but they should have a shot at a very good player.
Still, as Mitch Lawrence noted in the Daily News, Prokhorov's pre-draft pledge to win an NBA championship within "one year minimum and maximum in five years" and to "turn Knicks fans into Nets fans" is "[n]ot looking good."
...Echo of Gehry
Asked in an NBA.com interview what his sales pitch would be to free agents, Prokhorov, reprising much from his earlier video, asserted two competitive advantages.
One involves the presentation of a global team with fans all around the world. The other? "We are creating the history, practically from scratch now," with a great desire to win.
(Emphasis added)
Surely Prokhorov didn't know that his words sounded eerily reminiscent of (now-departed) project architect Frank Gehry, who at the 12/10/03 inaugural press conference called Atlantic Yards an "extraordinary opportunity... to do housing, to do a mixed project and build a whole neighborhood practically from scratch and fit it into an existing fabric and make something special out of it."
Posted by eric at May 19, 2010 10:03 AM