It’s been in the news before, but Bloomberg News’ report on Tuesday that Brooklyn Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov is looking to sell his 80 percent stake in the team sent shockwaves through the basketball and business world.
So we decided to ask real Brooklyn Nets fans what they thought about the ownership situation.
The simple question: Do you care about who owns the Brooklyn Nets?
SheridanHoops polled 50 random Brooklyn Nets fans about the team’s current ownership situation at the Barclays Center before Wednesday’s game against Memphis. While 52 percent of the respondents said it did not matter to them who owned the team, a very vocal 42 percent of those polled had a decidedly unfavorable opinion of Prokhorov as Brooklyn struggles here in the month of January.
A popular response indicated that fans would like an owner more involved with the team.
“It would be nice to see an owner who cares and who’s actually involved,” said Mike Trotto, who took public transportation to the Barclays Center from Union, N.J. “Prokhorov is mainly in Russia, not really visible. You see an owner like Steve Ballmer [of the Clippers] around all the time.”
Plenty of fan responses echoed Trotto’s and would like to see an owner more visibly supportive for the franchise. Nets fans see someone like Mark Cuban and they want their owner to be like that. Someone who attends every game, who’s vocal and owns a team for more than just profit margins.
“He’s not personable enough to know or care about him,” Dante Martinez of Long Island said of Prokhorov.
Tom Jory, a longtime Nets fan from Brooklyn Heights, was concerned that sanctions against Russian businesses were impacting Brooklyn’s ability to spend money.
“Plenty of people want a franchise in New York City,” he said. “They [ownership] got themselves in a financial bind. Now it doesn’t seem like he wants to spend, so we could use an owner who cares about the fans, the team, the community.”
Fans were upset with everyone from coaches, to players, to general manager Billy King. Those are normal reactions for a team that has lost seven straight games.
Nets fan Jonathan Figueiredo, who’s from Marlboro, N.J., is upset that Prokhorov moved the team from East Rutherford and now he wants to sell.
“I feel like Prokhorov came in and talked about a five-year plan, it’s not working and now he wants to bail,” said Nets fan DeCosta Smith.
Admittedly, a poll of just 50 Nets fans is a small sample size when the team has over 2.4 million likes on Facebook and over 520,000 Twitter followers but it seems like enough of a cross-section of fans are dissatisfied with Prokhorov that it should be some cause for concern.
Only one Nets fan who participated in this random poll was vocally supportive of Prokhorov, and even that endorsement seemed a bit back-handed.
“We’re probably not going to have another owner who spends this kind of money,” said Zac Cullen, from Marlboro, N.J. “He got good players but it’s just not working out.”
Once seen as a franchise player, Deron Williams has missed Brooklyn’s last four games and half of the Nets’ last 14 contests with injuries. Brook Lopez can’t seem to stay healthy and to compound matters, Brooklyn will likely swap first-round picks in 2015 as part of the trade that brought Joe Johnson to the Nets.
Most of the Nets fans questioned don’t really have a preference of who owns the team, but those who do care wouldn’t seem to mind at all if and when Mikhail Prokhorov sells the franchise.
Shlomo Sprung is a national columnist for SheridanHoops who focuses on analytics, profiles and features. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. You should follow him on Twitter.