Billionaire Russian buys Nets

This past week, it was announced that extremely wealthy Russian Oligarch (in this context, it means guy who go ridiculously wealthy when communism collapsed) Mikhail Prokhorov had agreed to a deal to purchase the New Jersey Nets, who’s ambitious plan to move to a brand new stadium/development in Brooklyn had run into financial difficulties.

It’s a great move for the league for many reasons. One, it brings a wealthy, basketball loving owner with a certain flair to the league, which can’t be a bad thing. Two, it gives the Nets an opportunity to establish themselves as a major NBA team, and not just a team from New Jersey. Three, as Alexander Wolff points out on CNNSI, it also potentially eliminates an overseas owner who would lure away the NBA’s top players to play in Europe for ridiculous sums of money. Four, it should help open up Russian to the NBA, providing better access to yet another global market.

Immediately, you can cue up the discussion of “Lebron is going to the Nets with Bosh and Wade”, and we’ll “enjoy” the endless rumours of the 2010 free agent class as we all enjoyed the Knicks grand plans of last year. But while the new deep Russian pockets will help, you can still factor in the declining salary cap and the unlikelihood of decimating their roster in so short a time as reasons why it won’t happen.

By the way Mr. Prokhorov, SportPops.com is available for the right price, if you wanted to ad us to your sporting empire. Just saying.