One day after Brooklyn Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov made the move to relieve Billy King of his general manager duties and fire Lionel Hollins, the Russian billionaire is already talking about a championship.
No, not this season. I think Mikhail and the general public have both come to that realization that the Brooklyn Nets are nowhere near a playoff spot, let alone a championship.
But can things change for the Nets by time the 2016-17 season starts? Prokhorov thinks so.
“I’m sure next season, we’ll be, I hope, championship contender,” Prokhorov said to the media Monday morning.
Reasons behind this notion came with Prokhorov citing the team’s upcoming cap space, new arena, new practice facility set to open in a few weeks in Sunset Park, and relationship with a D-League team that begins next year in Brooklyn.
“If we compare now and six years ago, we have a state-of-the-art arena in New York, we’ll have a fascinating training facility and it will open I think next month. We’ll have a D-League team. We’ll have a big amount of money under the cap next season. We have everything the best. I’m really optimistic. Now I’m 100 percent owner of the team and the arena and I’m very committed to be championship and I’m all in.”
Prokhorov was far from his ball balancing tricks that captivated his Nets team in training camp. On this cold Monday in Brooklyn, with an absurd amount of media in attendance waiting for new on his future plan, Prokhorov was mostly vague in his ideas. Just the strong notion that he had championship dreams.
“Frankly speaking, I deserve a championship now much more than six years ago,” Prokhorov said. “I think we have been really bold, and we did our best in order to reach a championship. And I still believe with some luck our results might have been more promising. But, I’ll do my best to make us a championship team.”
The Nets currently sit at 10-27 and they don’t own any of their draft picks until 2019. Not ideal selling points for any players. They’re only armed with cap space, which is good, but around 20 other teams are expected to possess the same, if not more, money to spend in the summer of 2016. While Prokhorov does have a championship mentality, it’s still unclear who in the world is running this franchise.
“I think we need to have a sense of identity and style of play,” Prokhorov said. “Are we building a team around franchise player, or are we balancing with younger athletes without superstar system, or are we about 3-point shooting or defense or speed? Of course we can’t be anything at the same time, so it will be very important conversation with the future GM and future coach.”
Tony Brown will take over the Nets as the interim coach and Frank Zanin, the assistant general manager, is looked at as the person the Nets need to talk to for any transactions. As far as Prokhorov bringing in any friends from Moscow or even laying out the red carpet for John Calipari, the idea doesn’t sound too promising. Also, Billy King’s role with the Nets is now more unclear than ever.
“Coach Cal is a great coach but we won’t be discussing today on any name because it’s the first day of our, like, new approach,” Prokhorov said on Calipari. And on CSKA Moscow president Andrey Vatutin joining the Nets, “I have no plans for that.” Also, it appears that Billy King won’t be heavily consulted on any general manager search but Prokhorov will be accepting his idea as a friend.
Mikhail Prokhorov repeatedly spoke of a ‘reset’ for the franchise and he made it known that it wouldn’t be a rebuild. Prokhorov won’t be giving up anytime soon on a franchise he believes is the best in the NBA. And why wouldn’t he think that? It’s his team. The tone of this move, as the many moves the Nets have made, is that they are willing to make a big risk to reap big rewards. The removal of King and Hollins right now might not have been ideal but it wouldn’t have mattered, both of them were as good as gone once the season ended.
In order to climb out of the hole they are in now, Brooklyn is going to have to do something drastic and possibly risky but based off the five and 1/2 years that Mikhail Prokhorov has been with the Nets, all trends point towards a big move coming soon.
