New Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov has named the daughter of a Russian diplomat to head the company overseeing the NBA team’s move from New Jersey to Brooklyn.
The Russian billionaire’s Onexim Group announced yesterday that Irina Pavlova would be his local representative, opening an office in New York and working with the team’s front office “to ensure they have everything they need to build a championship team.”
Prokhorov plans to keep living in Moscow, so Pavlova will work on his behalf with developer Bruce Ratner on the Barclays Center in Prospect Heights and potentially on the rest of the Atlantic Yards project.
Pavlova grew up in Moscow and Washington and was Google’s first Russian hire, according to Onexim, which described her as “the perfect bridge between Russia and the United States, having lived and worked in both places.”
Prokhorov has promised to turn the sad-sack Nets into NBA champions, and has said he will attend at least 25 percent of the team’s games every season.