Just about the time the San Antonio Spurs had finished a workout at Baruch College early Sunday afternoon came news that they would be facing a team in Brooklyn on Monday night in deep leadership turmoil.
Tom James, the Spurs’ senior director of communications, spread the word that the Nets had fired another coach, Lionel Hollins, and reassigned General Manager Billy King after the team’s 27th defeat in 37 games.
In other words, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, the Nets’ very rich Russian owner, had spoken.
Even more newsworthy, the Nets announced that Prokhorov would actually be surfacing at a Monday morning news conference, hopefully to explain how his audacious five-year championship guarantee had disintegrated into a qualitative mess of seismic proportions.