Mark Cuban is arguably the most visible owner in all of professional sports, one who’s known for being involved on a day-to-day basis with all levels of the Dallas Mavericks organization.
So it comes as little surprise Cuban would think the way Mikhail Prokhorov has chosen to run the Nets — entrusting the day-to-day operations of the franchise to advisers while living thousands of miles away in Moscow — isn’t the best way to build a championship-level franchise.
“Absolutely not,” Cuban said, when asked if such an arrangement could work while sitting courtside before the Nets and Mavericks played Friday night in Brooklyn.
“Hypothetically speaking — and this only applies to individuals 6-foot-5 and under — you can’t,” Cuban added with a smile to begin his explanation, “exempting” the 6-foot-7 Prokhorov. “That’s why I sit so close. It’s like trying to run a company and not being able to go to the sales meetings, not being able to go to the customer service meetings or the support meetings.
“There’s a reason why you’re starting to see more and more owners get closer and closer and closer. … Culture is important, attitude is important, communication is important. It may well be that you have people that can do all of those things for you, but I just happen to think that if an owner has the skill set where they can add value, they should.
“If you’ve got someone who can do it for them, that’s fine, but I just think it makes it more difficult.”
Unlike Cuban, who attends at least 75 or 80 percent of Mavericks games each year, Prokhorov has only been to two games this season — the home opener on Nov. 1, which the Nets won over the Heat, and last week’s blowout win over the Hawks in London.
Prokhorov, who has entered into politics alongside his many business dealings since purchasing the Nets in 2010, has spent the last several months preparing for next month’s Sochi Olympics in his native Russia, where he is in charge of the Russian Biathlon teams, which he hopes will win at least two gold medals.
Prokhorov was asked about being an absentee owner during his meeting with the media in London, and he stridently struck back at critics who said he isn’t paying attention to how the franchise is faring.
“Look, I’ll be back to Brooklyn after Olympics,” he said. “I am very busy because I am president of the Russian Biathlon Union, so I have a lot of jobs to do during the Olympics. But, after the Olympics, I, of course, will be at more games.
“But, frankly speaking, there’s a lot of criticism that I am not in Brooklyn, but I just have a question for you: Do you really think you need to be sitting in the arena to see a game? My friends, we are living in the 21st century. And, in spite of the fact I have no computer, I still have a subscription for the NBA games and for me, it’s like enough to even have a look on the stats so you can understand what is going on.”
This isn’t the first time the two men will have agreed to disagree. After Prokhorov’s Nets acquired Deron Williams in a blockbuster trade with the Jazz in February 2011, Williams — a Dallas native — became the prime free agent available in the summer of 2012, and the Nets and Mavericks became the two finalists to secure his services.
“Let the best man win,” Prokhorov said in April 2012 about the dual pursuits at a then-incomplete Barclays Center. “If he wins, I’ll crush him in a kickboxing throwdown.”
Cuban and Prokhorov also have offered up competing visions for how to build teams in the NBA under the league’s current collective bargaining agreement, which severely limits the financial flexibility of teams like the Nets to make moves to improve themselves once they’re far over the luxury tax.
Cuban, once a prolific taxpayer, has taken a more conservative approach under the new agreement, keeping cap space open each summer in order to allow him the flexibility to make moves — either via trade or free agency — to improve his roster.
“I don’t know if the Nets are struggling right now, but you can see where they are, and see what their flexibility is,” Cuban said. “They made their choice, and we made ours, and we’ll see what happens.
“I mean, you have to play the games, right? So we’ll see. The year has a long way to go. You just never know what’s going to happen. But I’ve been pretty outspoken about our approach and why. No need to rehash it. It’s pretty straightforward.”