Russian billionaire should help fortune shine upon Nets
September 25, 2009
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov’s bid to buy the New Jersey Nets was called “unpatriotic” by a member of his country’s upper parliament chamber’s sports committee.
“I can’t consider this action as anything other than unpatriotic,” sports committee member Aslambek Aslakhanov said on Thursday, according to the state news agency RIA Novosti.
“We also have talented children here, but sports isn’t being developed. They’re not trying in order for us to return to our former sports ranking of best in the world.”
Prokhorov’s bid for the Nets may be a boon to the troubled NBA team, but some Russian legislators and analysts call it a blow to the nation’s sports.
“I don’t deny that Mikhail Prokhorov has put money into developing sports in Russia, but I would have liked all the means he considered possible to have gone to specifically supporting sports in the fatherland,” upper-chamber legislator Viktor Ozerov was quoted as saying.
The collapse of the Soviet-era “Big Red Machine” that was a dominating force in Olympic Games has rankled many Russians, but the sports prowess has surged in recent years with an array of top tennis players and the recent victory in the world ice hockey championship.
Prokhorov, Russia’s richest man worth an estimated $9.5 billion by Forbes, reached a tentative deal on Wednesday to invest $200 million to acquire 80 percent of the Nets’ shares and fund nearly half the cost of building a new arena. Prokhorov, who owns a share in the prominent Russian team CSKA, says he wants the deal partly as a way to get access to the NBA’s training methods and educate coaches on how to improve Russian basketball.
