In his first comments to the New York media about the Nets since buying a minority share of the team, Joe Tsai told The Post he’s perfectly fine waiting until January 2021 to take over majority control and would love to buy a stake in Barclays Center as well.
“I’m very comfortable with the timeline we have set out at the original point of making the deal, which is in January 2021. Look, it’s only like 18 months away,” Tsai said.
Tsai — the co-founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba — bought 49 percent of the Nets a year ago for over $1 billion. While he also holds an option to purchase control in 2021 — a source told The Post it’s for the entire remaining 51 percent — reports have suggested he might buy a share of Barclays Center from Mikhail Prokhorov as well.
“I don’t know [if that will happen],” Tsai said. “But I would say this: If you talk to all the NBA owners, they all say it makes a lot of sense to combine the ownership of a team and the arena.
“There’s a lot of synergy. The fans do come into the building to watch the team play, so from a business standpoint it makes a lot of sense. I hope that I would have an opportunity. But it’s up to Mikhail Prokhorov, who owns the arena, to figure out what they want to do.”
While Tsai is looking a decade down the road — buying a 1/30th share in an NBA that is rapidly going global — Prokhorov will be divested within a year and a half, if not sooner. Despite being on disparate timelines, they’re making it work as an ownership team.
“The one common ground is we’re both competitive people. We want to win,” Tsai said. “We want to put a team on the floor that’s a winning team. And the good thing is the foundations of a winning team is you have to have a development mentality.
“You have to build that culture in order to win. You can’t just cobble together a bunch of stars and expect to win games. So on that philosophy, Mikhail and his organization and I have very much a commonality.”
Prokhorov learned that lesson the hard way when he first arrived, finding out that in the NBA — unlike fellow Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich spending his way to soccer glory at Chelsea — he could buy a team but not a title.
Former GM Billy King’s disastrous series of trades trying to leap to a championship ended up setting the team back. The developmental culture replacement Sean Marks instilled has seen the Nets make the playoffs and made it easier for co-owners on different timelines to stay on the same page.
“The thing that brings everything together is — credit to Mikhail — their organization brought in Sean Marks, and Sean Marks brought in Kenny Atkinson. Those are incredibly far-sighted decisions,” Tsai said. “They learned from their experience first coming into the Nets how hard it is to build a good team.
“But this season … they far exceeded everybody’s expectations. We’re in the playoffs ahead of schedule. So it’s not hard when the team is doing well, when we have the right people in the front office, to have a very harmonious ownership where everybody can be on the same page.
“I feel extremely lucky to come into this situation when I do have an opportunity to take over the team — exercising the option — I feel like I’ve inherited something that’s very, very good, that’s kind of passed on from the prior ownership. And that’s a fine situation to be in.”
The Nets’ situation has improved enough that they have both the cachet and the cap space to have a chance at big free agents like Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris.
“I don’t know because these are free agents; they have to make their decisions, right?” Tsai said, careful not to mention any names. “But the good thing is we’re at least part of the conversations because we have the flexibility of cap space. That’s all I can say.”
Atkinson has been named a finalist for the Rudy Tomjanovich Award as NBA Coach of the Year by the Professional Basketball Writers Association.
The award recognizes the coach who best combines excellence in his craft with cooperation with the media and fans. Mike D’Antoni (Rockets), Mike Malone (Nuggets), Nate McMillan (Pacers) and Doc Rivers (Clippers) also are finalists.