Flashback to 2017 branding episode: when Prokhorov joined Colbert, the Nets logos were everywhere

I missed the 7/20/17 episode of the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Show, described as "Billionaire Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov shows Stephen the ways of a Russian oligarch, which involves luxurious mansions, grandiose yachts and plentiful bologna."

Bottom line: Colbert wears a Nets jacket, Prokhorov wears a Brooklyn Basketball track suit. It's all good branding. Money cleanses.

Colbert offers a definition of oligarch as "rich guy--don't ask where his money came from" and says they "were given sweetheart deals to buy state owned resources after the collapse of the Soviet Union."

As the intro explains, Prokhorov was allowed to buy a state-owned nickel conglomerate "for just pennies on the nickel," and was forced to sell it, fortuitously, before the economic crash, after he got bad publicity after bringing "20 Russian models" women to France and was briefly jailed (but not charged) on suspicion of human trafficking.

After that intro, we get to Prokhorov's rich, rich life. "He's pals with Jay-Z, because he owns the Brooklyn Nets, the worst basketball team in the world." That's no longer true, and Prokhorov cashed out, but it's a great advertisement for Prokhorov, and the Nets (though Colbert at one point calls them Nyets).



The big picture

Three takeaways from Stephen Colbert’s much-hyped ‘Russia Week’, the Washington Post's Emily Yahr wrote 7/21/17, noting that "Colbert is at his best when he has a comic foil," and Prokhorov did the trick.

For example, when Prokhorov asks, "Can I call you Steve?” and Colbert assets, the oligarch replies, “If you said no, you will never leave the country,” Prokhorov replied.

Here's coverage at the time from NetsDaily:

There was only one mention of the Nets —the one about the “Nyets” —although Colbert and he spent much of the segment in Nets warm-up gear. Nor was there talk of the investigation of President Trump’s relationship with Russia. It was mostly a humanizing look at an oligarch ... which isn’t a bad thing when you’re the owner of the most high-profile Russian investment in the U.S. at a time when news about rich Russians is universally bad.

As NetsDaily points out, the  “60 Minutes” profile "back in May 2010 was an introduction to oligarch-as-sportsman. There was no dark side." Well, not much. The more recent one "was more about restoration of his image."

Indeed, the Nets beat reporters, as shown in links from NetsDaily, took it up.