Irina Pavlova, president of Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim Sports & Entertainment USA, will have the Nets' seat of honor at the NBA Draft Lottery Wednesday. Pavlova will try to do what no Nets executive or owner, including Prokhorov and Jay-Z, has done since 2000, get the overall #1 pick in the Draft. Lewis Katz, then Nets owner, pumped his fist as the Nets moved up from seventh to first.

And this time of course it's critical because if the ping bong balls land the wrong way and the Nets don't get a top three pick, they'll have to surrender the pick to Portland.

The daughter of a Russian diplomat with degrees from Moscow Linguistics Institute and Stanford, Pavlova has described her job this way: "bridge the gap between the management here in the States and the Moscow office. The way I see it is: I’m here to facilitate everything that needs to get done to get us a championship team." She is also a member of the Nets' Chairman's Council, its board of directors.