Literal and Figurative: New Nets Ownership Set to Shift the Landscape in New York City

Harvey Araton and at the New York Times have an article today that’s worth a look, if only for the goofy picture at the top. What’s more, the article cites Prokorhov and the Nets’ move to Brooklyn as signs of a new day dawning for a franchise that’s been a perpetual second fiddle for nearly its entire history.

Legal challenges and N.B.A. vetting hurdles remain before 80 percent ownership of the Nets shifts from Bruce C. Ratner to Prokhorov. Then it would take at least two years for them to move from New Jersey and become the Brooklyn Nets. If and when, the Nets will matter in a way they have only dreamed of since they were born in 1967 as the New Jersey Americans of the American Basketball Association, cash-poor and attention-starved.

Suddenly, the team that has been slumming in the shadows of the Manhattan skyline is a few notarized documents from initiating a fierce intracity rivalry with the Knicks. The franchise that has long symbolized suburban sterility could become a central player in Commissioner David Stern’s global basketball crusade.

And for those predicting Mark Cuban-like meddling, Ettore Messina, a former employee of his for CSKA Moscow, dismisses any such notions:

“Prokhorov’s philosophy is very simple. He says, ‘I select the specialists, they do their job and at the end I evaluate.’ In the four years I was there, he never made a call on basketball.”

If this sounds too good to be true for Nets fans, well, wait and see. There’s no telling how this will play out in the long run, but right now, it certainly appears as though Mikhail Prokhorov’s involvement is a sort of best-case scenario for the soon-to-be “Brooklyn” Nets.

You never know, of course, but right now it looks as though this goofy billionaire from Siberia might just be the savior this franchise has needed all along.