The Russian billionaire has declared that, “If everything goes as planned, I expect us to be in the playoffs next season … and (win a) championship in one year minimum and maximum in five years.”

How will the Nets get the marquee free agents this offseason? “The excitement is with the Nets. We will have a desire to win that is unmatched anywhere in the league. This will be a first-class organization with all the support it needs…I can convince the very best of the best that the Nets are the place they want to be.”

In the late 1990′s SLAM Magazine proclaimed, “Champs by 2001. Count on it.” That was when the Nets were actually decent. Still, the prediction went horribly wrong. Keith Van Horn got worse each year, Sam Cassell was traded for Stephon Marbury, and Jayson Williams traded an NBA career for a jail sentence.

The point is that the Nets are the Nets. Aside from the Jason Kidd era, what has gone right? Even when things were looking up and Keith Van Horn was the savior, they collapsed. Now? Things can’t look any worse, and Prokhorov is insisting everything is looking rosy.

Where do you begin with this one? ”We will have a desire to win that is unmatched anywhere in the league.” Alright, Prokhorov, tell that to the fans after you traded Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson for Courtney Lee. It wasn’t your team then, but you’re still going to have to answer those questions.

“This will be a first-class organization with all the support it needs.”  Right…Where exactly are all those fans, again? You had the worst attendance in the league last year, under 70% capacity per game. Well, there’s a perfect explanation- you only won 12 games. So, winning a title next year would probably solve that problem, right?

Sure, the Nets have plenty of cap space. So do a lot of other teams. Is one crazy Russian guy enough to reel in LeBron James? Oh yeah, LeBron and Jay-Z, part-owner of the Nets, are tight, so that should seal the deal. Come on. All the Nets have to offer in terms of talent is Brook Lopez and hopefully the #1 pick.

Let’s go way back to 1996, when the Nets were all set to draft Kobe Bryant #8 overall. Kobe and his agent, however, had other ideas. They scoffed at the idea of playing ball in the swamps of Jersey, and scared the Nets into selecting Kerry Kittles. Fast forward fourteen years. The Nets are coming off one of the worst seasons in NBA history, have lost most of what little fan support they had to begin with, and don’t have a real home. Newark? Brooklyn? East Rutherford? What do you think Kobe would have done back in ’96 if the Nets looked the way they do now? He probably would’ve retired if the Nets selected him.

So, yeah, forget all that. Put your money on the Nets winning the title in the next five years…at least you’ll get some decent odds- and a nice “Thank you” from your bookie.