Michael Jordan's tumultuous 13-year reign as NBA Owner finally comes to an end
Michael Jordan's tenure as the General Manager of the Charlotte Hornets is officially over. The NBA Board of Governors has finally approved the sale of the North Carolina-based team to Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin.
The amount that the Hornets were sold for was a staggering $3 billion and a bulk of that will go into Michael Jordan's pocket in two weeks at the most, according to the report of Adrian Wojnarowski.
ESPN Sources: The NBA’s Board of Governors has approved the sale of the Charlotte Hornets to a group led by Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin, clearing the way to end Michael Jordan’s 13-year run as majority owner.
In addition to Wojnarowski's report, the sale of the Hornets was approved by 29 team governors, with only New York Knicks' James Dolan voting against it.
The NBA's board of governors approved the sale of the Charlotte Hornets with a vote of 29-1.
Knicks owner James Dolan was the only vote against, per @wojespn pic.twitter.com/KACjxeQ0Am
Jordan purchased the majority stake in the Hornets in 2010 for $275 million.
The new Hornets owner, Rick Shnall, is the co-president of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and was also part of the group that purchased the Atlanta Hawks for $850 million in 2015.
As the last duty of Michael Jordan as the team's general manager, he was significant in making the decision to draft Brandon Miller as the second overall pick in the 2023 NBA draft behind consensus top pick Victor Wembanyama.
In the 13 years that Jordan handled the Charlotte Hornets, the team had three playoff appearances in 2010, 2014, and 2016, all of which ended in the first round.
Michael Jordan was the last Black majority owner in the NBA
As the sale of the Charlotte Hornets is now complete, there is no black majority ownership in any of the NBA teams, according to ESPN's Marc Spears.
The NBA predominantly has Black or African-American athletes as they constitute 71.8% of the total number of players. With the sale of the Charlotte Hornets, there are not only two people of color who are NBA team owners — Joe Tsai of the Brooklyn Nets and Vivek Ranadive of the Toronto Raptors.
Even with the sale of Jordan's majority stake, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver expressed that he would welcome more diversity in team ownership.
“It’s something that if we were expanding that the league would be in a position to focus directly on that, but in individual team transactions, the market takes us where we are," said Silver. "I will say I know that increasingly our governors are focused on diversity in their ownership groups just as they are in their front office, so the trend lines have been positive over the last several years.”