On a Monday night game in Washington D.C. against the Wizards, Kris Humphries, ex-husband of Kim Kardashian, was booed on the court every time he touched the ball, according to reports. He still managed to finish the game scoring 21 points for his team, including 16 rebounds.
Mr. Humphries, along with the Brooklyn Nets coach Avery Johnson, found the whole thing hilarious.
Read More
That friendly man was Bruce Ratner, head of Forest City Ratner Companies, who had no idea that he had just invited two reporters from The Commercial Observer to join him. Read More
Brooklyn may be home to a swelling creative class, but all that brain power—or at least that of Jay-Z, Bruce Ratner and Mikhail Prokhorov—could do no better than "the Brooklyn Nets" when it comes to naming the team, which moves to the borough next season. The Observer was really pulling for the Brooklyn Queens Expressways or the BroBos, but our dreams were rejected like a Kris Humphreys lay-up. Read More
One year from now, Jay-Z will be performing in his hometown Brooklyn. That's the good news. The rapper's love of basketball has led to his owning a small stake in the former New Jersey Nets, which from now on will be the Brooklyn Nets. (We would have really preferred it if owner/Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov had actually named the team after his girlfriends.)
The group will find its new home at the soon-to-be-built Barclays Center on Flatbush and Atlantic Ave., as part of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards Project that's been going so well. Jay himself announced the official name in a "brief and anticlimactic" ceremony in New Jersey today.
Read More
On Sept. 2, Mikhail Prokhorov, billionaire owner of the soon-to-be-Brooklyn Nets, announced he would consider a run for the Russian presidency this winter if the political party he created, Right Cause, does well in parliamentary elections in December. (The Transom first learned of this from a friend who is a journalist in Moscow, and confirmed it with English-language reports of Mr. Prokhorov’s comments.)
So, if Mr. Prokhorov, the central-casting projection of modern muscular Russia, does, in fact, edge out his friend Vladimir Putin or Mr. Putin’s hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, what will it mean for the borough’s b-ball? Can one man be the leader of a superpower and the owner of a powerhouse at the same time? Read More
The Atlantic Yards play opened last night in Brooklyn, but the real drama is onsite at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic. A ballet of steel beams is dancing as the arena-that-almost-wasn't gets underway. No more digging, no more demolishing--it's all up from here for the SHoP-designed Barclays Center, the future Read More
On Oct. 28, Mikhail Prokhorov, the billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets, threw a lavish launch party in Chelsea to celebrate the arrival of Snob magazine in New York. The event was complete with foie gras and a performance by jazz songstress Cassandra Wilson. Some have criticized Prokhorov for bringing a Russian-language title Read More
To Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, Brooklyn is a country—one that he says will help him make his Nets worth $1 billion in five years.
The Russian billionaire is featured on the cover of Forbes Russia’s August “Stars and Money” issue, discussing his conservative profit estimates, his passion and love for sports, and the Russian stereotypes Read More
Officially, Mikhail Prohkorov owns the Nets.
Following Tuesday's approval from the NBA's Board of commissioners, the Russian billionaire today closed on a deal with developer Bruce Ratner to buy the Nets for $200 million (and fund tens of millions in losses), according to a joint statement put out by Mr. Ratner's Forest City Ratner and Mr. Read More
Bruce Ratner's tenure at the top of an NBA team is over.
Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov was just approved as the Nets' new owner by the NBA's board of commissioners, according to a statement sent out by the NBA.
This ends a more than six-year stretch for Mr. Ratner, the Brooklyn-based developer whose Nets sunk to nearly the Read More
Bruce Ratner has another year to raise $324 Read More
If Atlantic Yards is Bruce Ratner's Odyssey, he's approaching Ithaca.
More than six years after the ambitious project was unveiled to the world, the Brooklyn developer announced Wednesday that he had completed a "master closing" for the project, executing mountains of contracts with numerous governmental agencies and finalizing the financing of $511 million in tax-free Read More
Score a big win for Ratner! Financing nearly complete for his Brooklyn arena, key piece of Atlantic Read More
Doubts are fading for Bruce Ratner's new Nets arena planned for Brooklyn.
Mr. Ratner, owner of the Nets, has successfully marketed $511 million in tax-free bonds to build the arena, clearing the largest remaining hurdle to the project. Mr. Ratner's firm, Forest City Ratner, announced the news Tuesday afternoon, saying the bonds were priced at Read More
The latest quarterly filing from Forest City Enterprises--parent company of Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner--is in, and there's a few points worth noting:
-The company's efforts to start construction on the Nets arena faces another previously unreported hurdle: Forest City stopped sending in required payments on a $162 million loan--the mortgage on its Read More
