History of the Brooklyn Nets
After the dismissal of major pending lawsuits, groundbreaking for Barclays Center occurred on March 11, 2010.
On September 26, 2011, Jay-Z, the Nets' minority owner, announced that the team's new name after the move to Brooklyn would be the Brooklyn Nets. The team officially became the Brooklyn Nets on April 30, 2012. The team's new colors were announced to be black and white, and two official logos designed by Timothy Morris were unveiled. The primary logo is a shield depicting the team name 'Nets', along with a basketball with an overlaid "B". The secondary logo is the same "B-ball" surrounded by a black circle with the text "Brooklyn" and "New York". The new logo's typeface and colors are meant to evoke New York City Subway rollsigns from the 1950s when Brooklyn last had a major league sports team. This rebranding of the team led to a dramatic increase in merchandise sales for the team. On the first two days that the new merchandise was available, total sales from the NBA Store were 10 times that of a typical year when the team was in New Jersey, and in the initial months of the 2012–13 season, the Nets led all NBA teams in apparel sales.
Mikhail Prokhorov
He became the first non-North American team owner in the NBA. In December 2011, after announcing his run for the Russian presidency, the NBA confirmed that Prokhorov's ownership interest would not need to be altered in the event of his election (Herb Kohl, a then sitting but since retired U.S. Senator, owned the Milwaukee Bucks at the time). On 30 April 2012, the Nets officially made the move to Brooklyn, rebranding themselves as the Brooklyn Nets.