Billionaire Russian oligarch and Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov is visiting Nets training camp for the first time since he purchased the team back in 2010, and today after Nets practice he took his team and coaches through what appeared to be some sort of bizarre circus pilates seminar.
"I think it's very important for the new team to have special team building, and of course the commitment of ownership as part of the team," Prokhorov told the media afterwards.
"But I also wanted to share with them my own experience with martial arts, and I really will be happy if it helps them in some way."
Take a look at some of the exercises and decide for yourself it they'll help the Nets this season!
Here he is dribbling a basketball while simultaneously balancing on another basketball:
And here he is doing push-ups with a stick on a basketball:
According to Tim Bontemps of the NY Post, the entire session lasted about 30 minutes. The players tried out a handful of Prokhorov's exercises and seemed to struggle:
Here's Prokhorov doing the basketball equivalent of patting your head while rubbing your stomach:
And a few other gems:
When you're a billionaire owner of a professional sports franchise, subjecting your players to wonky exercises is apparently one of the perks, along with, I don't know, courtside seats.
Nets head coach Lionel Hollins spoke positively of the experience and of Prokhorov afterward.
"He's a very interesting guy. He should probably doing that [Dos Equis] commercial, 'I don't normally drink beer, but when I do… .' He's one of those guys that's been around the world, has a varied sort of interest, and it's interesting to get to know him better."
