Mikhail Prokhorov and James Dolan may never be best friends, but the Knicks owner admitted he got something out of his meeting of the minds with his Nets counterpart earlier this summer.
“Free lunch,” Dolan deadpanned as laughter erupted Wednesday afternoon at the press conference officially announcing the two New York franchises would share hosting responsibilities for the 2015 All-Star Game.
The Post’s Fred Kerber exclusively reported last month that NBA Commissioner David Stern brokered the meeting between the owners in order to help ease any tensions between the two organizations, whose representatives have sparred since Prokhorov bought the Nets back in 2010.
But on a day when everyone was stressing just how well all parties are getting along, it was repeated that the two men had no real animosity towards one another.
“There was no necessity [for a meeting],” NBA Commissioner David Stern said. “When I heard from each of them, that they would like to sort of get-together and talk about their shared interests and the like, I said, ‘That’s a great idea. So have mine call yours or have yours call mine,’ or something like that.
“It was not a major diplomatic initiative, but it came easily, and I was happy to assist in setting it up.”
Irina Pavlova, the president of Onexim, Prokhorov’s investment vehicle that owns the Nets, went a step further, saying the meeting was nothing more than a chance for the two men to meet at long last.
“This whole thing is totally blown out of proportion,” she said. “They’re two owners of two New York teams that never actually sat down and talked before. They sat down together, they had lunch, they talked … it wasn’t like they had a hatchet to be buried or anything. It was just a conversation between two men who own basketball teams in New York City.
“They never sat down [together before], and Mikhail had owned the team for quite a period of time by then, and it was just the right thing to do, to just get together and talk.”