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April 11, 2012
Mikhail Prokhorov in his own words
The InterNets [NYDailyNews.com]
by Stefan Bondy
The Daily News, in just publishing a transcript of Nets' principal owner Mikhail Prokhorov's comments to the media yesterday, is actually doing us a favor by not layering on the fawning NetsDaily-type "most interesting man in the world" blather.
Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov spoke to the media today at the construction site of the Barclays Center. This is what he said:
Opening statement: When I bought a share of the Barclays Center together with my partner, we had a joke, that I became a partnership in a hole. But now I’m quite happy that we are all here. And with my partner Bruce Ratner and I, we held on to that vision. We saw the future. And we saw that it will be really a wonderful venue for all the Brooklynites. And we saw that it will be a joy and excitement for all the community. The Nets, like the arena, is still under construction. It’s on the building stage and I will keep my prediction of a championship. I will do my best, together with my friends, together with my partners, we will make the Brooklyn Nets the champions of the NBA. And I am very committed to this.
Thoughts on arena? It’s not my first visit to the arena. Now it looks really good. So I think just welcome the 21st century. I’m sure it will be the best arena in the world. And I am proud to have a partner like Bruce Ratner and we can do together a great miracle. So now we have practically the state of the art arena, and we need to have a genius team. All this combination will give another emotion, another joy, another excitement to the great borough, Brooklyn.
What will it take to build Nets to title contender? So first of all I want to tell that we need to be very patient because it’s easy to have a good team, and playoff team. And it’s very difficult to make a championship team. We need to be really patient. We need to go really slow step to find the best pieces for the team. Not only just really good players. But we need to have the players which can be one very strong single team. Just team spirit. What we need. And we are really on the right way.
If it's "easy to have a good team," what's stopping the Nets from achieving even mediocrity?
Mr. Proky, in your visits what do you think of Brooklyn? So I think I read the article in the Daily News that said that every 9-out-of-10 Brooklynites quite happy for the arena for the team moving. And I feel that Brooklyn deserves a professional team since the time the Dodgers left in 1957. And of course I know there is some kind of skeptical criticism, and of course it’s impossible to make happy just everyone....
NoLandGrab: "It’s impossible to make happy just everyone?" Could it be that Mr. Prokhorov is reading NoLandGrab, too, and not just nonsense from the Daily News?
Posted by eric at April 11, 2012 12:56 PM