FanHouse Mikhail Prokhorov

The uber-rich are people, too, right? Well, they may put their pants on one leg at a time, but they certainly don't eat meals like we do.

Consider this: Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire expected to purchase a majority stake in the New Jersey Nets, recently celebrated a positive meeting with the NBA's governors by having lunch with a half dozen friends. What's the big deal, right?

Well, according to the New York Post, his tab for lunch at Nello's, a tony restaurant in New York's Upper East Side, was nearly $19,000. How exactly does one eat the cost equivalent of a mid-size sedan? Keep reading to find out.

Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski has a tour de force column on what the kids would refer to as Mikhail Prokhorov's steez. The new Nets owner has quite the social reputation (that's one way of putting it), and Woj investigates fully ...

... just as the NBA plans to. One of the conditions for the sale of the Nets to the Russian billionaire is approval by the NBA Board of Governors, which is a fancy name for the collection of NBA owners. Twenty-two of the other 29 owners must give the thumbs-up before Prokhorov can take the reins. An NBA official told FanHouse Wednesday this could happen at the league meetings in October or April, or by correspondence at any point.

The question is whether any owners will raise a stink about Prokhorov's reputation, which includes accusations of involvement in a prostitute ring and, less criminally, a desire to have good-looking women around at all times.

The Nets are not expected to do particularly well in the win-loss ledger this season. The squad missed the playoffs in the East last season, and has since swapped All-Star caliber Vince Carter for Courtney Lee and a few role players, and while Terrence Williams is expected to be a solid rookie he's not exactly superstar material. This is a rebuilding year.

But the work personnel boss Rod Thorn did to clear the books for the Summer of 2010 has been admirable, the Carter trade in particular opening up a gaping payroll hole just when a gaping payroll hole will be a good thing. As of today, the Nets can expect to have upwards of $30 million of cap space next summer, as much as any other team in the league.

If new Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov -- a Russian billionaire who by no account will be shy about spending his fortune stateside -- wants to make a big splash in his first summer in the NBA, he will certainly have the opportunity.

Well, that got out of hand fast: Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov has officially purchased the New Jersey Nets. Speculation about Prokhorov has been building over the past week, despite Nets officials denying the team was up for sale. But Prokhorov and incumbent owner Bruce Ratner announced the deal today.

According to a Nets press release, Prokhorov's investment vehicle Onexim will take an 80% stake in the Nets, a 45% stake in the Barclays Center (the Nets' unbuilt Brooklyn home) and an option for a 20% stake in Ratner's Atlantic Yards development. Prokorov will pay $200 million to get into the league, and it has been reported that he will put $700 million toward the construction of Barclays.

As previously reported, Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov is indeed looking to purchase the New Jersey Nets. Prokhorov posted a LiveJournal entry detailing his weekend proposal to extant Nets shareholders. I don't speak Russian, so I'll depend on Reuters's reportage, which states Prokhorov plans to invest $700 million in the construction of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in exchange for ownership of the team (and assumedly a big chunk of the gym).

The arena and the team go hand-in-hand -- without the Nets, the arena promoters have an extra 45 or so dates to fill up. Having an NBA team attached long-term to a building cuts down some of the risk in constructing the building in the first place. Situations we've seen in Oklahoma City and Kansas City -- where a city builds an arena to get a team, instead of having the team in place first -- are rare. So you see why Prokhorov's interest spreads beyond the development side of the Brooklyn equation. (He also happens to be a massive hoops fan.)

A report from Reuters Thursday afternoon asserted that Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov was preparing an offer in the neighborhood of $700 million to purchase a stake in the Nets franchise and help build current team owner Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, which would include a new Nets arena in Brooklyn. A Prokhorov representative vaguely confirmed that the tycoon (Russia's richest man, at assets around $9.5 billion) could possibly participate in building a sports arena in the United States.

Charles V. Bagli of the New York Times was later able to get confirmation from Nets executives that Ratner is negotiating to sell not just a major stake of the Nets franchise to Prokhorov, but a majority stake. While Prokhorov has been attached to major sports teams before, this is the closest he has reportedly come to entering an America-based league.