BROOKLYN ENDEAVOR EXPERIENCE - ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS

With the formal handover of the New Jersey Nets to Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov just days away, Bruce Ratner can go back to what he's good at, things like building big buildings in Brooklyn and making a lot of money in the process.

"I was never one to puff my chest out with some big ego about being the owner of a basketball team," Mr. Ratner said during a rare interview.

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The March 11 groundbreaking for the Nets' new arena project featured, from left, Bruce Ratner, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. David Paterson, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, rapper and Nets investor Jay-Z and City Council candidate Delia Hunley-Adossa.

History will show that from the fall of 2004 until this week, Mr. Ratner owned the Nets and, unlike nearly all of his other professional endeavors, he wasn't very good at it.

Before he bought the team for $300 million, Mr. Ratner admittedly wasn't a basketball fan. The only reason he made the deal was so he could build an arena and a massive development in downtown Brooklyn across the street from two very profitable shopping centers he began building there a decade ago. He subsequently lost $25 million to $30 million each season, he estimates, as the franchise declined from one of the league's best to its worst, winning just 12 games last season.

At the moment, the team has no coach. Its biggest star is a minority investor, the hip-hop impresario Jay-Z. It is about to move into a temporary home at the Prudential Center in Newark, where the team will likely stay until the 2012-'13 season.

Nets fans, especially those in New Jersey who are losing their team to Brooklyn in two or three seasons, remain bitter.

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The Nets' bench during a loss to the Lakers in November.

"He leaves no legacy, just the Nets in ruins," said Mike Kozlowski, who ran the Web site Joenetsfan.com until it got too depressing.

But a championship team was never the point.

"He had a vision for a team that was for sale and didn't have many takers," NBA commissioner David Stern said of Mr. Ratner. "He had a vision of using it for an anchor for a spectacular new building and a new real-estate development, and that's what he's going to do."

Mr. Ratner's employees speak of how he was always optimistic about his project, through six years of litigation and a global financial crisis, when, in basketball parlance, he learned to rebound. Mr. Ratner always promised his troops they would figure out a way to keep alive his dream of moving the basketball team into a gleaming arena in Brooklyn. He didn't tell anyone what he really thought—that the project was dead.

"Back then, no one knew if anything would succeed," said Mr. Ratner, 65 years old. "And we were running out of time."

By fall 2008, Mr. Ratner and his family's parent company, Forest City Enterprises, had shouldered more than $100 million in losses. His project was mired in litigation. And he faced the prospect of losing the rights to develop the property if he didn't complete a $1 billion financing package in 15 months.

"I would bet if you started back in '03 and somebody told him how long this would be and how expensive the fight would be, his stockholders, partners, whatever they are, and even probably him would say, 'you know, if you really costed it all out, you won't make money and you shouldn't do it,' " New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a recent interview. "He's had some very difficult times. He's had to invest an awful lot more at less desirable terms than what the original business model said."

The biggest hit came when the global economy collapsed. Financial advisers told Mr. Ratner to forget about issuing $1 billion in bonds to finance construction of a fancy Frank Gehry-designed arena. He'd be lucky to get $600 million, they said.

"I operate on the theory of the black swan," Mr. Ratner said, referring to the idea made famous in the 2007 book that argued high-impact, hard-to-predict and challenging events are inevitable. "There will be chaos. So you have to be flexible in thinking about your problems."

Sitting in his Upper East Side apartment on a November weekend, Mr. Ratner started to play around with his project's numbers on an Excel spreadsheet and compare them with other arenas in the country. Within hours, Mr. Ratner had decided to ditch the Gehry-designed building that would cost more than $600 million, not including the land development and infrastructure fees that would have pushed the price to more than $1 billion.

He also knew he'd have to delay construction of his commercial and residential buildings and negotiate a new deal with the state's Metropolitan Transit Authority. In the previous deal, he'd agreed to pay $100 million for the site where the project, known as Atlantic Yards, will be built. But now he would have to replace that lump sum with a series of staggered payments.

Even with those changes, he was still $300 million short, leaving him with a task akin to sinking a full-court three-point shot with time running out—he had to find a buyer at the worst possible time for selling an expensive, illiquid asset with limited revenue and huge annual expenses. His search for a buyer landed him in the home of former Russian nickel magnate Mikhail Prokhorov for a four-hour dinner in July.

Mr. Prokhorov was hardly the textbook candidate. He was a colorful billionaire who had built a fortune during the early years of Russian democracy. He also had been arrested in Courchevel, France, in 2007 on suspicions of transporting prostitutes—although he was never charged and said he did nothing wrong.

Mr. Ratner quickly concluded that Mr. Prokhorov was the best partner for the Nets and Atlantic Yards. The Russian loved basketball and New York and, thanks to a fortune estimated at $17 billion, he wasn't afraid of risk.

Two weeks later, Mr. Prokhorov submitted a bid for $260 million that would give him an 80% stake in the team and a 45% stake in the arena, and an option to purchase 20% of the surrounding development Mr. Ratner plans to build at the site.

In September, the two men sealed their deal. In November, Mr. Ratner cleared his biggest legal hurdle with a crucial eminent-domain victory. A month later, amid an improving credit market, the Nets raised $511 million in tax-free bonds for the arena project.

Representatives of Mr. Prokhorov said he wouldn't comment until after the deal with Mr. Ratner is completed.

Mr. Ratner predicts that when the arena opens in two-and-a-half years, the value of his stake in the team and the surrounding real estate will exceed what he paid for the Nets and also what he sustained in losses during the six-year battle for the project.

He expects other complications, perhaps even involving his partner. But he senses he would overcome that, too.

"I know that there will be black swans in everything we do," he said. "It could be about me, it could be about my partner or my team. We'll figure it out."

Write to Matthew Futterman at matthew.futterman@wsj.com