Who owns nba teams

He was also a minority owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team while being a majority stakeholder of the Magic. In , the 76ers merged Team Dignitas and Apex Gaming under the Dignitas umbrella and started an eSports team, the first-ever owned by a North American professional sports team.

A lifelong sports aficionado, Robert Sarver of real estate giant Southwest Value Partners owns the Phoenix Suns franchise, a venture that started after a conversation with University of Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson. The Portland Trail Blazers have had one owner in the last three decades: entrepreneur and philanthropist Paul Allen.

After just one season since his acquisition of the franchise from Larry Weinberg, the Trail Blazers reached the NBA Finals and bounced back to the championship round in just two years. He is best known for a proposed style of play where he wanted to keep one player in his team on offense all the time with a 4-on-5 defense on the opposite end. Holt invested in the Spurs in to help keep the team in San Antonio.

Holt retired in , succeeded by his Julianna. Larry Tanenbaum is famous for being chair of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns several major league sports teams, including the Toronto Raptors. He is also involved in the finance and construction industries, as well as in philanthropy. They drafted well, hired a great coach, got a little lucky, and, oh yeah, were bought by a couple of billionaires. Lacob, who is 63, is the guy we hear from and see more, as he handles the day-to-day operations of the team.

Guber is way more interesting, though. Miller is the widow of former Jazz owner Larry Miller. Her husband died in , and she took over percent of his business holdings. That included a chain of movie theaters, a bunch of car dealerships, and, yes, the Jazz. She also moved the ownership of the Jazz franchise into a legacy trust to ensure that the team both stayed in her family and also in Utah.

So the owner currently celebrating having just won the NBA title is…a faceless corporation. The picture only gets murkier from here. She is the widow of Tom Benson, who was the owner of the Pelicans until his death. Now she owns an NBA team. The Spurs situation is kind of a murky at the moment, which is odd for the most consistent franchise of the last 20 years. However, Holt retired as the chairman in , making his wife, Julianna, the new chairperson.

As of early , the Holts were planning to divorce. While we are not privy to all the Holt family dynamics, this situation seems up in the air. Arison is the chairman of the Carnival Cruise Line, the biggest cruise company in the world. Arison owns the Heat, which he bought in The team has had a lot of success under him, especially after he was able to convince Pat Riley to join the organization.

Stan Kroenke has been quite generous with his sports franchises. So now his wife owns those teams. She is an heir to the Walmart fortune.

Some owners fade into the background. Dolan is not one of those. The guy was the CEO of Microsoft for over a decade, and he raked in a ton of cash in the process. They are involved in many charitable and philanthropic activities. Since coming to Charlotte, Whitfield has overseen the dramatic growth of both the franchise and arena.

Before joining the organization, Whitfield most recently served as Director of Business and Legal Affairs for Jordan Brand, where he managed endorsements and sports marketing strategy. At Nike Basketball, he was responsible for scouting new potential endorsers, negotiating endorsement contracts and overseeing business and marketing strategies for more than NBA players.

His career in sports began as a player agent representing professional athletes with F. Before joining F. Whitfield also founded HoopTee Charities, Inc, a North Carolina based non-profit corporation whose mission is to provide scholarships for disadvantaged youngsters to attend camps and educational youth based programs across the country. In addition, for the past 33 years he has run, which he founded, the Achievements Unlimited Basketball School in Greensboro and Charlotte serving more than 10, kids, including many who attend on need-based scholarships.

He joined the front office as assistant general manager immediately after retiring as a player in and worked under a pair of Hall-of-Famers: legendary NBA executive Jerry West and Bill Sharman, the first person to win a championship as a player, coach and executive. He earned First Team All-Rookie honors in after averaging The following season he averaged career highs of He averaged Despite two major operations and the expectation that he would likely never play again, Kupchak returned to action on November 25, , more than 23 months after the injury.

He went on to play another two seasons after that, helping the Lakers to the NBA Championship, before retiring in That came on the heels of some owners dragging their feet to commit to pay hourly arena workers for missed games. Rubin was reportedly furious about the planned salary cuts. Seeing the writing on the wall, Harris reversed course and committed to paying Sixers and Devils employees in full on Tuesday. Ballmer scored a huge win this week for his dream of building a new arena.

Pera owns nearly three-quarters of wireless equipment maker Ubiquiti Networks. He was the lead investor in the Grizzlies purchase in Gilbert made his first fortune from Quicken Loans, the largest online mortgage lender, which he cofounded in at 22 years old.