Brooklyn Nets Franchise Transfer Ownership Russia: The billionaire owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, reiterated his year-old intention to handover the Brooklyn Nets ownership base to Russia, but has since toned down his rhetoric, according to CNN.

Prokhorov's company, Onexim Sports and Entertainment, which owns the NBA basketball team, said in a statement released via the Brooklyn Nets, "This is a long process which may or may not come to fruition and nothing is imminent. Of course, no steps in this direction could or would be taken without the full knowledge and approval of the NBA."
"I have already stated that I will transfer the basketball club (under the Russian jurisdiction)," Prokhorov told reporters in Moscow according to Russian news agency ITAR-Tass.

But NBA said that the transfer has yet to begin.
Mike Bass, executive vice president of NBA communications, told CNN, "The Nets are owned by Mikhail Prokhorov through a U.S.-based company. We have received no official application, nor is there a process under way through our office to transfer the ownership of the Nets to another company."

According to CNN, 'if an application to change ownership was submitted by the Nets, 75% of NBA team owners -- or 23 of 30 -- would have to approve the move, Bass said. He said that the NBA's Board of Governors (the 30 team owners) would have to decide whether there are any issues with the transfer of ownership application.

Currently, the NBA has no rules prohibiting a foreign company from owning an NBA team.

The back-and-forth comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin pushes Russian businessmen to "de-offshore" companies owned abroad.'

The Motley Fool said that as a result of Russia's on going occupation of Crimea, the U.S. has enforced a number of sanctions on the country, 'which include export bans and the blacklisting of several government employees. A newly passed House bill will expand these efforts to encompass more officials, and possibly, Russian corporations.' This is the time when pressure between the U.S. and Russia is at its highest level since the end of the Cold War.

Putin told a group of Russian businessmen last week, "Entrepreneurs need to understand their responsibility. Our priority stance is that Russian companies have to be registered here, in their home country and have a transparent ownership structure."

Majority of Americans now view Russia as a serious problem and a quarter see the country as "an adversary", Pew Research Center reported, therefore the potential PR problem.

While the league revenue is going upward, a recent Harris poll that asked US fans to name their favourite sport shows, the NBA ranks fifth behind NFL, MLB, college football and auto racing.

According to Motley Fool, because of this, now, perhaps, teams are indebted to fans' demands. 'And now that U.S. bars have begun to ban Russian vodka' there's a possibility that they might boycott basketball as well. 'Sports regularly get political, and many times, for reasons far less serious than the annexation of a sovereign country.'