Media MonsterNBA

Nets Owner Could Crush You With Ease, And Other Tidbits From NYT Mag

New Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov has been the subject of seemingly endless conversation for a while now, but the New York Times Magazine thought they could still wring some interesting info out of the Russian tycoon. And in a lengthy new profile, writer Chip Brown proves that Prokhorov is still worthy of further exploration.

The opening anecdote is one of the piece’s best, on pure entertainment value and how well it matches up with how most probably picture Prokhorov:

“‘Pretend you are putting a gun against my back,’ said the Russian billionaire. We were standing in a small training room on the third floor of his house outside Moscow. Suddenly he pivoted, and any ideas I had of sprinting off with his wallet went poof. His loaded foot was poised to crush my knee.”

A guy who could hurt you very badly at the drop of a hat – especially if you tried to cross him? Yes, that fits in quite well with the “mysterious Russian oligarch” narrative. There are also tales of his (much, much less privileged) childhood and his playboy reputation (which he called “legend,” though he doesn’t mind it).

And there’s also a detailed account of how Prokhorov made his billions. There’s too much to go over it all here (we’d definitely recommend reading it in full), but it definitely does not gloss over how Prokhorov made all that money, and that at an important step along the way, there was, in the words of the New York Times Magazine itself, what was widely considered “an act of colossal criminality.”

And Prokhorov wasn’t an angel in the process of running metal giant Norilsk Nickel (obtained through that “act of colossal criminality”), either. In Brown’s words:

Some things Prokhorov did suggest a creepy usurpation of dissent — a replacement of the control of the old Soviet state with the control of a for-profit corporation.

The piece might be most notable in that it focuses very little on basketball…and plenty on Prokhorov’s often-questionable (to put it mildly) road to becoming a multi-billionaire. Oh, and it talks about hoe he watched that Sarah Palin-Katie Couric interview so he would know what not to do in speaking with media members. How can’t you be fascinated by this guy?

Photo via