Last week, the Los Angeles Lakers were sold again, at a record-shattering valuation, for the second time in as many years. This week, the 5/6 of the Buss siblings are trying to offload their remaining 17.8 percent in the franchise, although Jeanie is pushing back.
What makes the Lakers sale — for a $12.5 billion valuation — so wild is that the team was just sold a year ago to a group led by Mark Walter. With Walter now scrambling for cold hard cash amid a federal investigation (he’s also allegedly looking to sell his shares in London-based football club Chelsea FC, while Bill Simmons of The Ringer predicts the Los Angeles Dodgers are next), Los Angeles is now being flipped to a potentially even shadier ownership group.
In June, couple Lukas and Samantha Walton — two heirs to the Walmart family fortune — procured a minority portion of our Chicago Bulls. Real heads might remember that Walter and co. bought a minority stake of the Lakers years ago, before ultimately taking over. While the Reinsdorf family insisted at the time of the Walton sale was not going to presage a bigger buyout, should we necessarily believe them?
NBA team valuations are skyrocketing right now. The Lakers sold for a $2.5 billion value increase over their asking price last year, which will have the added ripple effect of boosting the Bulls’ projected value.
Franchises are becoming so valuable now that they are essentially assets for a new stratosphere of owners. Possessing a team doesn’t even feel like it’s about winning anymore. Now, it’s one of the safest investment opportunities available to the mega-rich. Ownership has become a resource for parking money, with the knowledge that the team’s value will only appreciate by the time you sell.
Bulls owners Michael and Jerry Reinsdorf. © David Banks-Imagn ImagesThe Sins of the Current Bulls Owners
Obviously, Jerry Reinsdorf and Jerry Krause’s strained relationships with Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson were quite messy. The team’s most unforgivable sin of that Last Dance era, probably, was letting the 1997-98 roster core walk/retire.
Chicago has, fundamentally, never recovered.
The team’s eventual pivot from Krause’s Baby Bulls mistakes to the more competent early years of the John Paxson front office helped restore some semblance of respectability to Chicago. But that trademark Reinsdorf, uh, cost-efficiency eventually hurt the Bulls’ ability to build around the margins.
Ego clashes with Tom Thibodeau led to a run of horrible coaches and mismanaged rosters. Gar Forman and Paxson’s bizarre trade of Jimmy Butler produced a fairly fruitless rebuild. Chicago has returned to the playoffs exactly once in the intervening nine years — the AKME and Billy Donovan eras yielded exactly one semi-fun season, 2021-22, which culminated in a miserable 4-1 defeat to the Milwaukee Bucks.
Although new executive vice president of basketball operations Bryson Graham, new head coach Tiago Splitter, and new superstar-in-waiting Caleb Wilson are all exciting, we know that a lot of holdovers from the bungled AKME front office (including Paxson) still have a voice in decision-making. And the Reinsdorfs (and Wirtzes) are still cutting checks. Can this Chicago club effectively soar when Wilson and Matas Buzelis reach their All-Star ceilings, if it’s going to be hamstrung by ownership?
Jerry ReinsdorfSo… Should Ownership Sell the Bulls?
In 1985, Jerry Reinsdorf and a group of investors purchased a majority stake in the Chicago Bulls from the estate of Blackhawks owner Arthur Wirtz and minority owners Philip Klutznick, Walter Shorenstein and George Steinbrenner (yes, the Yankees’ owner). According to the story from the Chicago Tribune at the time of the sale, 26 percent of the portion purchased by Reinsdorf’s group came from the Wirtz family.
However, that doesn’t mean the Wirtz family sold their entire stake in the franchise. According to a Chicago Tribune story in 2013, the Wirtz family still held a minority stake in the franchise. And, as Ty Roush of Forbes points out, the Wirtz and Reinsdorf families still hold majority stakes in the United Center.
Chicago has been a cash cow for 41 years of Reinsdorf ownership and 54 years of Wirtz ownership. But would an $8-10 billion valuation change their minds?
Fans have long advocated for a sale to a more committed ownership group, one looking to construct a consistent winner as opposed to… whatever this has been for most of the last 28 years.
How can the Bulls protect themselves against an ownership group that turns into a cost-cutting lemon, a la Bill Chisholm, Tom Dundon, and Miriam Adelson, or a possibly insolvent fraud with murky backers, a la Mark Walter?
So what’s the best-case scenario in a new ownership group?
Essentially, the Bulls would be best served by selling to a Steve Ballmer type — someone so rich that they’re willing to nakedly subvert the league’s hard salary cap to overpay All-Stars. With the NBA and Ballmer essentially colluding to greenlight this money-laundering scheme, it sure seems like there won’t really be any penalties for more nakedly luring superstars.
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