Mikhail Prokhorov: In NBA, a single mistake can throw you 5-6 years back

Mikhail Prokhorov has shared his impressions from the first season as the owner of the NBA’s New Jersey Nets.

«It turned out to be much harder than it had seemed when I was entering the business. The NBA has an enormous competition and very severe rules, perhaps the most severe of all sports. A single mistake can throw you 5-6 years back. In football, if you bought an expensive player, but he’s not playing, you can safely put him on the bench and just pay him his salary and let him go after a few years. In the NBA, taking a wrong player with a 5- or 6-years contract is an awful mistake, because his salary is included in your salaries limit and you cannot take another player so easily,» said the Russian billionaire in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda.

«Fortunately, we made no mistakes this season. And the most important thing is that we managed to bring our first star player into the team. I mean Deron Williams, around whom we can now build a league-winning team. Our young players needed a leader and this is a major strategic step.»