At first, the headline is one hell of a stopper: Basketball writer Chris Sheridan tops his latest piece with “Prokhorov to sell Nets, donate fortune.” No, wait, it continues. “…if elected president of Russia.”
Ah, well, then. At present, Prokhorov is in Russia in an effort to win votes for his liberal, pro-business Right Cause party with few delusions of actually, you know, becoming Russian president; the Washington Post states that “his main goal at the moment is to force a second round, by keeping Putin under 50 percent and emerging as the second-place finisher.”
Right Cause currently holds no seats in the Duma after earning about 2.14% of the vote in 2008 elections, and The ‘Post reported last week that Gennady Zyuganov and his Communist (!) party are running second and “Opinion polls put Prokhorov, the 46-year-old owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, at the bottom of the list of contenders with support of around 4 percent.”
So let’s assume Prokhorov will be sticking around in his American office for some time to come, then. BiE will now leave it up to Nets fans to decide whether that’s positive or not; the big guy himself appears to believe that everything is “going according to plan” with their team.
