In a story on Mikhail Prokhorov’s decade as Nets owner, Prokhorov’s top basketball adviser Sergei Kushchenko tells TASS the Russian oligarch initially looked at the Knicks and Suns as well as the Nets.
“Prokhorov started toying with the idea of purchasing an NBA team back in 2007,” said Kushchenko who was his GM at CSKA Moscow and member of the Nets board. “And in 2008, during the Summer Olympics in Beijing, we were already holding negotiations on this issue with NBA Commissioner David Stern.
”We were looking over various options at that time,” Kushchenko continued.