Morning Tweet: Russian billionaires, the New Jersey Nets and you

Mar 29, 2010, 9:00 AM EDT

Yes, I’d have to agree; followed closely by the jet ski backflip footage. But while Sunday night’s 60 Minutes piece on Russian billionaire and pending New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov made for interesting TV, was it substantial TV? Some say no. Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report says that the 60 Minutes interview was just a series of softball questions and hero worship masked as journalism. Nets fans are excited about Prokhorov’s pending ownership of their hapless franchise, and who can blame them? But some see Russia’s wealthiest citizen as a robber baron who has been involved in some shady shenanigans — both in business and his personal life — who has probably not been fully vetted by the star-struck NBA. And then there’s the fact that not all New Yorkers are happy with the Atlantic Yards project, a mixed-use commercial and residential development in the Prospect Heights neighborhood near Brooklyn which will include the Barclays Center, the new home for the Nets. Oder:

Miracles do happen, such as Russia’s richest man stepping in to bail out a broke developer subsidized by New York taxpayers and the government’s gift of eminent domain. THAT is a miracle.

Here’s the 60 Minutes piece. I won’t go as far as calling it fluff, but it’s not up to the standards we’ve come to expect with that show, either.
Monday? I didn’t expect to see you here!