NBANBABill Chisholm’s record $6.1 billion deal sounds great, but a rich and enthusiastic owner doesn’t guarantee anything. Just look at recent history.
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By Howard BeckMarch 21, 12:41 pm UTC • 7 min
Before blessing Bill Chisholm’s bid to own the Boston Celtics, the NBA will scour his finances, run personal and criminal background checks, and analyze every last line in his bio, as well as those of his proposed partners. NBA ownership is an exclusive club. That scrutiny—along with a few billion dollars—is the price of entry.
The process could take months, at the end of which league officials will have everything they need to know before granting Chisholm the privilege of owning one of the NBA’s crown jewels.
Well, almost everything.
The vetting of prospective owners is indeed detailed and thorough, but there’s one question that can never be answered in advance: What kind of owner will you be?
Hands on or hands off? Hyperaggressive or methodical? Passionate or analytical? Free spending or conservative? Will you trust your top basketball lieutenants or trample them? Will you know when it’s right to do the former and when it’s necessary to do the latter? Are you here to compete? To win? To pursue championships? Or are you just in it for the profits and prestige? To put it more bluntly: Will you be a “good” owner—in the view of fans and league observers—or a “bad” owner?
As recent history shows us—think Phoenix, under new owner Mat Ishbia, and Dallas, under the Adelson family—those answers are rarely evident on day one. Sometimes even the best intentions can sink a franchise’s fortunes. And the stakes in Boston, where the Celtics just hung their 18th banner, are as high as you can get.
That’s one lesson that Chisholm, who on Thursday announced a record $6.1 billion deal to buy the Celtics, needs no tutoring on. He grew up 30 miles north of Boston, spent his undergraduate years at Dartmouth, and in a statement called himself a “die-hard Celtics fan my entire life.” In that same announcement, current majority owner Wyc Grousbeck said that Chisholm “appreciates the importance of the Celtics and burns with a passion to win on the court while being totally committed to the community. Quite simply, he wants to be a great owner.”
Those are sentiments every fan wants to hear about the people who run their teams. Perhaps even more so in the case of the Celtics, who boast one of the NBA’s deepest, most talented rosters—and one of its most expensive, with a payroll that could exceed $450 million (including luxury taxes) next season, per ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
The Celtics are a strong bet to win it all again in June. Their two biggest stars, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, are in their primes and under contract for years to come. They’re well supported by savvy two-way players like Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, and Kristaps Porzingis. They could be contending for titles for the rest of the decade.
But it’s never that simple in this league, especially under the NBA’s current system, which not only penalizes the biggest spenders with heavy taxes but also restricts their ability to make trades and sign new players once they hit certain thresholds. It’s harder than ever to sustain greatness.
So the most critical questions facing the Celtics this summer and beyond will be the following: How long can they keep this group together? And how much will they be willing to pay to do so? Under Grousbeck and co-owner Steve Pagliuca, those answers seemed clear. They’ve demonstrated a willingness to spend whatever it takes to win. One presumes that Grousbeck—who will stay on as CEO and governor for three years, as a condition of the sale—has received assurances that Chisholm will follow his lead. One presumes that Chisholm, assuming he’s approved by the NBA board of governors, will promise as much on the day he takes over.
As Chisholm said in his statement Thursday, “I also understand that there is a responsibility as a leader of the organization to the people of Boston, and I am up for this challenge.”
But just about every new owner says the right things at the start. It’s the follow-through that gets tricky.
Consider Mikhail Prokhorov, the swaggering Russian oligarch who in 2010 bought the then–New Jersey Nets and promised a championship within five years. He spent freely and pushed his front office to make one blockbuster move after another—which sounds great in the abstract but was catastrophic in reality. The Nets made a lot of splashy acquisitions, from Deron Williams and Joe Johnson to Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. But they never got close to the Finals, and those deals cost them years of draft capital.
Consider Prokhorov’s onetime rival James Dolan, owner of the Knicks, who spent wildly from the moment he took over in 1999 and and chased marquee players, coaches, and executives for two decades … only to watch his team perennially flounder, inciting another cycle of replacing those players, coaches, and executives.
Every fan wants an owner who’s aggressive and engaged and willing to spend … until those impulses backfire.
Or consider Oklahoma City’s Clay Bennett, whose strict aversion to paying the luxury tax in the early 2010s prompted the Thunder to trade future MVP James Harden—just months after they made the Finals with the young trio of Harden, Kevin Durant, and Russell Westbrook.
No fan wants an owner who’s afraid of spending. Yet Bennett has also presided over one of the league’s most consistent winners over the past 15 years and has empowered his front office, led by Sam Presti, to do its job without interference.
Or consider two of the NBA’s most recent arrivals in the ownership suite—and how catastrophic their decision-making has been.
Ishbia took control of the Suns in February 2023 and immediately authorized a blockbuster trade for Durant. It was the kind of all-in move that fans and pundits generally celebrate. But it cost the Suns nearly all of their draft capital, for a mercurial star in his mid-30s. Four months later, Ishbia pushed for a trade for Bradley Beal, an oft-injured former All-Star with a massive contract, a deal that also cost Phoenix draft picks and payroll flexibility.
The Suns today are in danger of missing the playoffs, even though they have one of the league’s highest payrolls, and they might have the bleakest outlook in the league … if not for the Dallas Mavericks.
The NBA’s most recent ownership change came in December 2023, when Mark Cuban sold controlling interest of the Mavericks to the Adelson family, with Patrick Dumont as governor and CEO. Dumont will now forever be known as the owner who in February authorized the shocking trade of Luka Doncic, one of the three best players in the world, to the Los Angeles Lakers, a deal that has been universally panned.
The Suns are now victims of their own overaggression, a classic case of new owner syndrome. The Mavericks are a victim of their owner’s sheer cluelessness about the league—and his misplaced faith in his general manager.
As team insiders often say, the greatest competitive advantage you can have is a good owner, and the greatest disadvantage you can have is a bad owner. It’s one of the most underrated factors for success in the league.
We don’t know yet what kind of owner Chisholm will be—one who dictates, or one who listens. But he’ll have some advantages from day one, including one of the savviest front offices, led by Brad Stevens, and that star-studded roster. The structure of the sale, with Grousbeck staying on as governor through 2027-28, should also make for a smoother transition and give Chisholm time to learn.
The deal itself is unique, with Chisholm acquiring just 51 percent of the team initially, at a valuation of $6.1 billion, and the rest of the balance due three years later, with built-in escalators to account for the expected increase in value. The total valuation is expected to reach $7.3 billion, according to Axios, a detail confirmed to The Ringer by multiple NBA sources. It will be the most ever paid for a North American pro sports team—and a powerful vote of confidence in the NBA’s future, at a time when pundits have been fretting over declining TV ratings.
But first, the board of governors has to vet Chisholm’s group and approve the sale. Some questions remain. Some league insiders wonder about the feasibility of Grousbeck remaining in charge while Chisholm has a majority share. Some are raising doubts about the sale price and Chisholm’s ability to raise enough funds to meet it.
Assuming those concerns are adequately addressed, Chisholm could conceivably take control by this summer. He will surely say all the right things. He’ll reminisce about rooting for the Celtics as a child. He’ll rhapsodize about Celtics pride and Celtics mystique. He’ll reference those 18 (maybe 19?) banners. He’ll promise more. He’ll reverently invoke Bill Russell and Red Auerbach and Larry Bird. He’ll vow to keep paying Tatum and Brown, to keep the supporting cast together. He might light a ceremonial cigar.
But it will be years before we know what kind of owner he’ll be—good, bad, or otherwise.
For more on the Celtics, Grousbeck, and the franchise’s history, watch Celtics City, now streaming on HBO Max.
Howard Beck got his basketball education covering the Shaq-and-Kobe Lakers for the L.A. Daily News starting in 1997, and has been writing and reporting about the NBA ever since. He’s also covered the league for The New York Times, Bleacher Report, and Sports Illustrated. He’s a co-host of ‘The Real Ones.’
