Brooklyn Nets boss pressing to move team office to Russia

It's unclear what move would mean to $50M training facility project in Sunset Park

Mikhail Prokhorov and Barclays Center
Mikhail Prokhorov and Barclays Center

The billionaire owner of the Brooklyn Nets is looking to relocate his basketball team’s Manhattan corporate office to his home country of Russia amid the ongoing political clash between that country and the U.S.

Mikhail Prokhorov, a Barclays Center investor and former Russian presidential and mayoral candidate, said earlier this week that he will transfer ownership of the team to a Russian company, the Brooklyn Paper reported.

It wasn’t clear whether the National Basketball Association will allow the move from the Nets’ 15 Metrotech Center front office in Downtown Brooklyn. Prokhorov has not yet applied to the NBA to switch venues, the paper said, but held preliminary discussions on the matter with the association last year.

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“This is a long process which may or may not come to fruition and nothing is imminent,” read a statement issued to the Daily News by Prokhorov’s company, Onexim Sports and Entertainment.

Also unclear: the impact such a move could have on plans for a $50 million training facility atop an eight-floor building in Sunset Park’s Industry City, slated for completion by the summer of 2015 in a partnership with Jamestown Properties, Angelo Gordon and Belvedere Capital, as The Real Deal previously reported[Brooklyn Paper] and [NYDN] — Angela Hunt