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Mikhail Prokhorov was in Brooklyn to attend the Nets playoff games vs. the Bulls, but at the same time, his foundation, the Mikhail Prokhorov Fund, was pushing culture, promoting the fund's three-year long cultural exchange with the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The exchange is being produced by Prokhorov's sister, Irina Prokhorova, often described as one of Russia's leading intellectuals. NetsDaily

Brooklyn Nets, Mikhail Prokhorov, Brooklyn 

Through five NBA championship drives and 14 All-Star seasons, the Lakers' Kobe Bryant had seen just about everything. But when he stepped to the free throw line Tuesday night with1:19 to play in the first half of L.A.'s 92-83 win over the Nets, he got something new. Rising up from out of the crowd was a familiar "M-V-P!" chant. He hears it all the time at Staples Center. Never in an opponents' building. And the serenade began again late as he made three big plays - two on offense and one on defense - to carry the Lakers to victory in his first game in Brooklyn. "From my perspective it was pretty damn cool," Bryant said. "I enjoyed it immensely." New York Daily News

Los Angeles Lakers, Kobe Bryant, Brooklyn 

With the Battle of the Boroughs, Part III, taking place this past week, it only seems fitting that "The Association" would follow Nets power forward and Manhattan resident Kris Humphries around as he seeks support within New York Knicks' "territory." Hump also talks about the ups and downs of the season, and what it feels like now that the team has lost eight of their last 10 games. NetsDaily

Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks, Media, Kris Humphries, New York, Brooklyn 

The Jazz's drive from the airport to Brooklyn on Monday was uneventful. Getting to the hotel was another story. "We took a tour of the arena twice," Jazz coach Tyrone Corbin said, laughing. Translation: The bus driver got lost. Fortunately, the Jazz happened to have a living Brooklyn-savvy GPS system on the bus with them: Tinsley. "He was kind of lost," the Jazz backup point guard said, smiling. "He made about two left turns the wrong way and two right turns …" Those right turns weren't so right, after all. "We could've been to the hotel a half-hour (earlier)," Tinsley recalled. "I thought we were staying at another hotel. I thought they knew something I didn't know." Deseret News

Utah Jazz, Coaching, Brooklyn, Tyrone Corbin 

Tinsley had extra motivation to get to the hotel quickly: Jamaal Jr., his 8-year-old son, and other family members. "They were at the hotel waiting," he said, "and I knew he wasn't going the right direction, so I was just trying to help him out." Deseret News

Utah Jazz, Coaching, Jamaal Tinsley, Brooklyn, Tyrone Corbin 

Three reasons why tonight's Celtics-Nets game is an extremely big deal: 1. This is the first game Marv Albert — who was born in Brooklyn, as Marvin Aufrichtig, in 1941 — has ever called in his home borough. 2. That's big on your basic, local-boy-makes-good level. 3. That's big beyond that level, because hometowns aren't simple things. Brooklyn, for example, is where young Marv taught himself play-by-play. But Brooklyn is also the accent he spent years trying to lose. It's where his first surname, Aufrichtig, was taken away. Marv, in other words, is something more complex than Marty Markowitz. If we study the things Marv took from Brooklyn, and the things he had to leave behind, then we can see the formation of the man who will inevitably unleash a "Yes!" tonight. Grantland

Brooklyn Nets, Media, Marv Albert, Brooklyn 

For Marv, athletes are slowly being stripped of their mysticism. Marv didn't become a suck-up, the announcer who gleans a few "scoops" for a lifetime as the athlete's unofficial wingman. It's more like he made players into his co-conspirators. "Kenny Sears's stale jokes put the other players to sleep," Marv wrote in the Lincoln Log in 1957. Now, fast-forward three decades. Remember when Michael Jordan hit six first-half 3-pointers in the '92 Finals and gave that I-can't-believe-it-either shrug? It's often forgotten that the guy he was shrugging at — his co-conspirator, you might say — was the NBC announcer whom he liked so much that he'd feel hurt if he didn't get asked for an interview. The guy MJ was shrugging at was Marv. Grantland

Charlotte Bobcats, Brooklyn Nets, Michael Jordan, Media, Marv Albert, Brooklyn 

Gov. Chris Christie doesn't have any fond farewells in store for the Nets, who play their final game in New Jersey tonight before the franchise moves to Brooklyn. "I'm not going to the Nets game tonight," he said during a press conference at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, "and my message to the Nets is, 'Goodbye.'" Newark Star-Ledger

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn, Chris Christie 

Christie scoffed at the team's decision to choose New York over New Jersey. "That's one of the most beautiful arenas in America they have a chance to play in, it's in one of the country's most vibrant cities, and they want to leave here and go to Brooklyn?" he asked. "Good riddance, see you later. I think there'll be some other NBA team who may be looking to relocate and they might look at that arena and the fan base in the New Jersey and New York area and say, `This is an opportunity to increase our fan base and try something different.'" New York Post

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn, Chris Christie 

Months after Mount St. Helens erupted in May 1980, the New Jersey Nets ignited a blast of their own at what was then known as the Rutgers Athletic Center. Timing it to a visit by the Portland Trail Blazers — a franchise based about 50 miles southwest of the volcano — the Nets commemorated the event by handing out key chains filled with authentic Mount St. Helens ash. So they thought, or claimed. The architect of the stunt was the team’s promotions manager, Howard Freeman, who had commissioned a local school’s shop class to build a six-foot papier-mâché volcano. “We had traded for Maurice Lucas the year before from Portland, and he said he had a bunch of Mount St. Helens ash,” Freeman said in a recent interview. “Honestly, it could have come from his fireplace, for all we knew.” Triggered by a hired dwarf wielding a fire extinguisher loaded with a chemical compound, the makeshift volcano discharged without a hitch during halftime of a Nets overtime victory on Feb. 20, 1981. It was, in retrospect, perfect imagery for the Nets’ 35-year run in New Jersey, which will end on Monday night at Prudential Center in Newark. Many eruptions, little fallout on a largely indifferent fan base. New York Times

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn 

Mourning had chided Martin for not working hard, for hiding in the training room, crying “my ankle, my ankle.” Martin responded, cruelly, “My kidney, my kidney,” in reference to the transplant Mourning had received. It was pure Nets nuttiness, which ranged from comic to tragic. “You always wondered, What if?” Turetzky said. What if Larry Brown hadn’t left, or if Richardson had stayed clean, or if Taub had listened in 1991 to Willis Reed, his general manager, and endorsed the drafting of the intimidating center Dikembe Mutombo over Kenny Anderson? What if Petrovic had never driven on the autobahn? New York Times

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn 

As the state hosts its last Nets game on Monday, fans (at least those who admitted as much) are resigned to the end of New Jersey basketball. There are some who are angry, some who are wistful and others who think Brooklyn will provide a better home for their unloved baby. “I am a die-hard Jersey fan; I love everything about Jersey,” said Paul Zarrillo, 70, a season-ticket holder from Greenwood Lake, who watched the Nets lose to the Knicks at the Prudential Center in Newark last week. “But I don’t know that we deserve it. Even when we had the great teams, we didn’t sell out that much. We basically have ourselves to blame.” New York Times

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn 

David Aldridge: League formally approved move of Nets to Brooklyn, name change. Barclays Center scheduled to open Sept. 28. Twitter

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn 

The Brooklyn Nets will be official by the weekend. NBA owners will vote to approve both the move to Brooklyn and the nickname, Brooklyn Nets, in the Board of Governors meetings on Thursday and Friday. The approval — a foregone conclusion considering there’s a $1 billion arena sprouting in Brooklyn — will be followed in the coming weeks by announcements revealing the logo and the uniform. New York Daily News

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn 

There’ll be no drunken fans at the new Nets arena if activists have their way. More than a 100 people showed up at a Brooklyn community board meeting last night to demand Prohibition-style limits on booze at the Nets’ new Barclays Center, which opens in September. Many neighbors fear that up to 18,000 boozed-up patrons will wreak havoc as they spill out of the arena after games. Some demanded that alcohol sales end at halftime — although every other NBA arena lets fans buy drinks until the start of the fourth quarter. New York Post

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn 

An arena grows in Brooklyn, as you can see in the photo below. The Nets released it this morning, announcing that construction is on schedule and the Barclays Center is scheduled to open Sept. 28. Of course, there is no word yet on whether Dwight Howard and Deron Williams will be playing together in Brooklyn next season. The Nets remain the prohibitive favorites to land both, unless the Dallas Mavericks can trade away Shawn Marion’s two remaining years for an expiring contract, which would give them the cap space to go after two max-salary unrestricted free agents — a subplot to the Dwight Drama that I mentioned in Sunday’s Power Rankings, as well as the previous week’s Power Rankings. SheridanHoops

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn 

The Nets have signed a lease for office space in Brooklyn, another step in their planned move from New Jersey. The team said today that 150 business side employees will occupy the 11th floor of the 19-story building at 15 MetroTech Center and that the relocation process from East Rutherford is expected to begin next month. The basketball operations staff will remain in New Jersey for now. Newark Star-Ledger

Brooklyn Nets, Brooklyn 

Deep inside the steel skeleton of the soon-to-be Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, drills are whirring, hammers striking and cranes excavating. The air is dusty and the ground littered with piles of wires, metal beams and loose hardware. Despite her suit dress and open-toed heels, an unconcerned MaryAnne Gilmartin, the arena’s lead developer, simply steps around the debris. In just 10 months, these gaping bones will welcome the NBA’s New Jersey Nets to their new home—as the Brooklyn Nets—thanks to two powerful women working vigorously behind the scenes. Forbes.com

Brooklyn Nets, Mikhail Prokhorov, Brooklyn, MaryAnne Gilmartin 

If real estate mogul Bruce Ratner and Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov are the faces of the New York-bound basketball franchise, Gilmartin and Irina Pavlova are the feet on the ground, clearing the way. As EVP of Forest City Ratner Companies, Gilmartin manages development of the near $1 billion arena, which anchors the larger $4.9 billion, 22-acre Atlantic Yards project in the heart of Brooklyn. Pavlova represents the interests of Prokhorov, the minority owner of the arena and majority owner of the Nets, its major tenant. Together, they are changing the landscape of the borough and female power players in the business of sports. Forbes.com

Brooklyn Nets, Mikhail Prokhorov, Brooklyn, Irina Pavlova, MaryAnne Gilmartin 

Spearheading the excitement over the 18,000-seat arena, Pavlova, 41, gets a live video feed of construction on her desktop and gushes that she cheers so hard at Nets’ home games she loses her voice. The Russian-American has dual citizenship, speaks five languages (with varying levels of fluency) and has worked all over the world. She started her career at Prudential in New York, and in 2005 launched the Moscow office of Google. In 2010, the chief executive of Onexim, Prokhorov’s company, told Pavlova over a casual dinner about a little deal with an American team, and asked if she’d be interested in “keeping an eye on things” in the States. “I don’t know a thing about basketball,” she said, but soon agreed. And she learned quick. “It took me a few months to get my hands around the business and get comfortable with how things work,” Pavlova says with a subtle accent. “I’ve learned it’s tickets, sponsorships and suite sales. It’s not rocket science.” Forbes.com

Brooklyn Nets, Mikhail Prokhorov, Brooklyn, Irina Pavlova, MaryAnne Gilmartin