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May 22, 2010
Prokhorov: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (and why the team might become the Brooklyn Bridges)
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder provides a critical look at Mikhail Prokhorov that is missing from so much media coverage of the oligarch's appearance in the New York area .
New Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov arrived with a good story--a Russian multi-billionaire with wit, insouciance, and the cash to realize his significant ambitions.
He proceeded this week to get the sports press to lap up more, showing far more public presence--if not exactly candor--than the saturnine, close-mouthed multi-millionaire who owns the Knicks. (Roundup 1, roundup 2.)
So no one asked very hard questions and, if it got a wee bit in that direction, they didn't follow up. The story line is the Russian mogul who'll revive a basketball team. Forget the NBA's opaque vetting process and the inability of the press to suss out the Zimbabwe controversy. Forget the huge footnote that should be added to Prokhorov's claim of being a "self-made" man.
Forget bogus blight and eminent domain, forget the giveaway of naming rights, forget a massive interim surface parking lot next to a historic district. Forget, forget, forget. It's a sports story, globalized.
And laugh at the witty guy ESPN columnist Bill Simmons dubs "Mutant Russian Mark Cuban." (Simmons predicts a name change; scroll down to why I disagree on his pick and expect the Nets to become the Brooklyn Bridges. Prokhorov must decide by October 1.)
And a rookie journalist who luckily snagged a one-on-one interview gets praised for (and celebrates) his exclusive, not scrutinized for his caricature of the Atlantic Yards controversy. Hard to blame him, right? Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes started it.
(Two voices of dissent: Dave D'Alessandro in the Star-Ledger, asserting that Prokhorov "knows less about the NBA than Bruce Ratner did when he showed up" and criticizing "some thicket of inane blather," and Dave Zirin in HuffPost, though he's conclusory about the Zimbabwe issue.)
Posted by steve at May 22, 2010 5:11 PM