In Rare Visit, Nets" Owner Offers His Support Mikhail D. Prokhorov spoke to reporters at the Nets" game against the Hawks in London, the second game he had attended this season. Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty Images LONDON - It took several weeks for him to break his silence, and when he did, it was in London, not New York or Moscow, where he makes his home for much of the year. But when the Nets" billionaire owner, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, met on Thursday with reporters covering the team - his first appearance at a Nets game since November - he seemed intent on allaying some of the criticism, as he called it, concerning the strength of his commitment to the team. He has watched the Nets play in person only twice this season, their home opener on Nov. 1 and Thursday's matchup against the Atlanta Hawks here, but he said he had seen enough to conclude that their disappointing start was not an accurate marker of their progress. "I am all in for the team, and I think it is the only way towards a championship," he said after he was reminded that when he bought the Nets in 2010, he set a goal of contending for an N.B.A. title within five years. This season, that has seemed a distant ambition; the Nets won only 6 of their first 20 games, and despite a run of six wins in their last seven - including Thursday's 127-110 win over the Hawks - they remain six games under .500 (16-22) as the season nears its halfway point. The Nets" Andray Blatche, center, going for the ball against the Hawks in London. Blatche had 20 points in the win, the sixth in seven games for the Nets. Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images But the goal of a championship is still valid, Prokhorov declared when he met with reporters for about 10 minutes in a drafty alcove off a corridor in O2 Arena. Thursday's game was the latest of nearly 200 the N.B.A. has staged in 55 countries in a "global games" series that dates to 1978. Unlike many of those games, the London matchup was a regular-season game, not an exhibition, and the Nets won it handily. Joe Johnson scored 26 of his 29 points in the first half, and Andray Blatche added 20 points and 14 rebounds for the Nets, who took the lead in the final minutes of the first half and never gave it back. Paul Pierce (18 points), Alan Anderson (15) and Kevin Garnett (12) also scored in double figures. Mike Scott and Shelvin Mack each scored 17 points off the bench to lead the Hawks (20-19). As an occasion aimed at promoting the N.B.A. - and, ultimately, advancing its long-held aspiration to extend its franchises to Europe - the game was a runaway success. The 16,000 seats sold out within four hours of being posted on the Internet, and a raucous crowd appeared about evenly split in its support of the Nets and the Hawks. Invited celebrities included Paul McCartney and his daughter Stella, a fashion designer, as well as several players from the Chelsea soccer team, which hosted the Nets on Tuesday at its Stamford Bridge stadium. The Chelsea players were invited at the urging of Nets center Kevin Garnett, a Blues fan acquired by Prokhorov in an off-season spending spree that brought his investment in players over his four-year ownership to something in the region of $200 million, according to Nets officials. The presence of Chelsea stars like Eden Hazard, David Luiz, André Schürrle and Demba Ba also served as a reminder of the common bond that Chelsea and the Nets have in their owners, Russian oligarchs who made huge fortunes in the post-Soviet scramble for ownership of Russia's natural resources and industries. It is something that has so far yielded far richer rewards for Roman Abramovich and Chelsea, with a cabinet full of English and European trophies in Abramovich's decade as the club's owner, than for Prokhorov and his Nets. Prokhorov, as has been his custom, adopted an easy-mannered, even jocular, approach to his meeting with reporters, even if it could hardly be described as a news conference. While other Nets and league representatives met with the news media in a specially appointed interview room with a professional sound systems, Prokhorov scheduled his encounter off a darkened corridor. Paul McCartney and his daughter Stella, a fashion designer, were among the celebrities at the game. Julian Finney/Getty Images Much of what he said, in a low voice, was barely audible over the musical cacophony being relayed over the arena's sound system. Still, the message was clear. He remains a "proud" and committed owner of the Nets and is confident that the team is on an uphill trajectory after an early season run that he admitted had not sent him "over the moon." He said he was happy to give the Nets" first-year coach, Jason Kidd, time to build a team around guard Deron Williams and newly acquired players like Garnett, Pierce and Andrei Kirilenko. "I have not any idea, any desire, to sell the team," he said, rebutting another rumor that has circulated in recent weeks, along with suggestions that Kidd might be fired. But Prokhorov sounded less sure that he would want to own the team once a championship had been won. "You can address that question to me as soon as I have a championship ring," he said. Before that, I'm proud to be the owner of the Nets. As for attending only two of this season's games, Prokhorov said his commitments in helping to organize the Winter Olympics in Sochi had left him little time to travel in recent months. "Do you really think you need to be sitting in the arena to see a game?" he said. My friends, we are living in the 21st century. Prokhorov said he had a subscription that allowed him to watch the Nets on the Internet, though he needled reporters anyway, saying, "And for me it's enough to have a look on the stats to know what is going on, and they send it over by carrier pigeon after each game, and of course in two weeks I get it in Moscow." He had special words of reassurance for Kidd, who has endured heavy criticism for the team's poor play. Prokhorov said that after one "very bad loss" by the Nets, which he did not specify, he had called Kidd from Moscow and advised him to adopt the indifference to published criticism that he said had been adopted by Mikhail Bulgakov, a Soviet-era writer and playwright whose novel "The Master and Margarita" is widely considered to be a masterpiece. "He said, "Don't read the Soviet papers before breakfast," especially their literary criticisms," Prokhorov said. Just keep writing, doing your job.