Today, Mikhail Prokhorov brought the Nets fully to Brooklyn, unveiling the team’s new practice facility on the eighth floor of one of Sunset Park’s Industry City buildings.
Next stop: Russia.
Prokhorov, the team’s billionaire Russian owner, said he hopes to bring an NBA game to Russia, and that the team is working on overcoming the challenges that could prevent that.
“My staff is still having discussions with the league,” Prokhorov said Wednesday. “One of the most difficult technical problems is Russian sanctions, because it’s prohibited for the NBA to communicate with the guests and with some local Russian firms which are for the time being under sanctions. This is a terrible headache for the time being for us.”
This isn’t the first flirtation between Prokhorov (as an NBA owner) and Russia. Under Prokhorov, the Nets traveled to Russia in October of 2010, when the team was still in New Jersey, for a pre-training camp trip, and in 2012 said that playing regular-season games in Russia “would be my dream.”
When Prokhorov entertained a 2012 presidential run in Russia, he also considered re-registering the ownership vehicle of the Nets as a Russian entity to comply with Russian law.
