If you're a billionaire, there's plenty to reason to be optimistic. And Mikhail Prokhorov was plenty optimistic in his press conference, but in his interview with YES Network's Sarah Kustok, he went even further, providing more details.
"I am very optimistic for the next summer," he told Kustok. "We have a great amount of money under the cap space. So, we have young talented players and we need to create a championship contender as soon as we can."
He reiterated the plan is NOT to blow things up to build on the core of "good young players," naming Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Chris McCullough and Markel Brown (!) twice. He also mentioned "experienced players like Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young. They're just in [their] prime. So we need one or two players to make a championship contender. So I will do my best and the organization will do its best to bridge the goal this summer." (There's that bridge analogy again!)
If you think this is public relations, you'd be wrong. Historically, this is Prokhorov -- he can't help himself -- and in the past, it should be noted, it was not a good thing. He let himself believe a title was one or two steps away. One more deal here, one more detail there and he'd be at center court in Barclays holding up the O'Brien Trophy.
But Prokhorov said as well that he wants a strategy that is "more medium and long-term" and that he wanted Billy King and Lionel Hollins' successors to do "their job as a team," perhaps indicating a friction between the two men he dumped.
"We are not in a hurry of making deals and we are not in a hurry of hiring people."