Buying Brooklyn at a Steep Discount

Also from the Times today, we learn that Mikhail Prokhorov is purchasing the Nets at just the right time:

Mikhail D. Prokhorov’s $200 million investment for 80 percent of the Nets and 45 percent of the team’s proposed arena is just one-third of what the team and arena are worth, according to Michael K. Ozanian, the national editor of Forbes, which compiles an annual list of professional team valuations.

Prokhorov’s investment is also far less than the total cost of $360 million in acquisition costs and working capital that Bruce C. Ratner, the team’s owner, paid for the Nets in 2004.

True, the team has floundered, its best players are gone and it plays to thin crowds in New Jersey. Ratner and his investors in the Nets have also lost nearly $400 million since buying the club. But few teams in recent years have been sold at such a steep discount.

If only you’d had two hundred million dollars lying around…