At every step of the way on the Nets journey to Brooklyn, David Stern was there, pushing, guiding, welcoming. Although Bruce Ratner, then Mikhail Prokhorov executed the plan, it was Stern who saw the Nets future in New York.
Starting in 1996, when he subtly engineered a change in territorial rights permitting the Nets to ultimately make the move through 2012 when they opened their Brooklyn arena under the league’s first foreign owner, Stern was there.
Sergey Kushchenko, Prokhorov’s sports advisor and president of the Russian basketball league, summed up what Stern meant to the Nets and the NBA as he recalled his long friendship with the long-time commissioner who died Wednesday.