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Is Michael Jordan also the GOAT of the NBA's worst current team owners?
Michael Jordan is the greatest player in the history of basketball. He made the NBA a global brand. The Chicago Bulls sold for $16.2 million in 1985. They are worth $4.1 billion today. Jordan is a primary reason for that growth. He deserves every cent the sport can possibly repay him over the course of a lifetime.
Jordan is also a trailblazing businessman, serving as the NBA's lone non-white principal owner for nearly a decade after purchasing a majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets for $275 million in 2010. He became the first billionaire athlete six years later, the same year Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Jordan's philanthropy includes donations of $100 million "to organizations dedicated to ensuring racial equality, social justice and greater education," $10 million to Make-A-Wish America, $5 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, plus millions more elsewhere.
The man is an icon. Maybe the icon.
News broke Thursday that Jordan plans to sell his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets, maybe for another billion, retaining a minority share in the franchise. No word on whether he will retain the title of "managing member of basketball operations," which he first assumed as a minority shareholder in 2006.
These caveats are necessary before we reach another conclusion that is less heady in the grand scheme: Jordan's record as an executive at the helm of a basketball operations department is abominable.
He hired former Bulls teammate Rod Higgins as general manager in 2007, followed by Rich Cho in 2011 and fellow University of North Carolina alum Mitch Kupchak in 2018, but Jordan is always the biggest voice in the room. Charlotte has been his NBA home since he assumed control of basketball operations in 2006.
Over the next four seasons, Jordan's Hornets traded their first-round pick for Marco Belinelli in 2016, drafted Monk at No. 11 over Donovan Mitchell (No. 13) and Bam Adebayo (No. 14) in 2017, swapped the No. 11 pick (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) for No. 12 (Bridges) in 2018 and selected Washington immediately ahead of Tyler Herro in 2019. Too many unfortunate decisions for them all to just be bad luck.
Time will tell if the selection of Ball will grant the Hornets a reprieve from draft misery. He was an All-Star replacement in his second season. He could not stay healthy this season, eventually fracturing his right ankle last month. There are already rumblings he could request a trade from Charlotte in the future.
It is a task to find trades of consequence during Jordan's reign. Charlotte's acquisition of Stephen Jackson in 2009 yielded his last two quality seasons, neither of which resulted in a single playoff victory. Mostly, the Hornets are trading one bad contract for another, often recycling players who failed previously in Charlotte.
The Jordan era has produced three playoff appearances in 17 seasons, all first-round exits, two of them sweeps. Their seven-year playoff drought will be the NBA's longest when the Sacramento Kings reach the postseason this year for the first time since 2006. Charlotte and the Minnesota Timberwolves are otherwise tied for the fewest playoff victories (three) since Jordan joined the Hornets' ownership group 17 years ago.
The New York Knicks are the only other team with single-digit playoff wins in a span when more than two-thirds of the league has 10 times as many postseason victories as the Hornets. We can only concede that Jordan is a superior team owner to the Knicks' James Dolan in every aspect except fielding a winner.
Daniel Weinman was crowned winner of the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event on Monday, taking home a record breaking $12.1 million in winnings. Weinman had to outlast the other 10,043 entrants to take home the prize and get his hands on his share of live poker’s largest ever prize pool – a staggering $93,399,900. As well as taking home the prize money, 35-year-old Weinman also got his hands on the WSOP Main Event bracelet. The huge bracelet contains 500 grams of 10-karat yellow gold, as well as 2,352 various precious gemstones.
Daniel Weinman won the World Series of Poker's main event world championship on Monday in Las Vegas, earning $12.1 million along the way. Playing in the tournament for a 16th year, Weinman was tops in a deep pool of 10,043 players vying for $93.39 million. His victory came after just 164 hands at the final table. "I was honestly on the fence about even coming back and playing this tournament," the 35-year-old Atlanta native told reporters afterward. Weinman's final table featured Jan-Peter Jachtmann, who landed in fourth place and took home $3 million, as well as Toby Lewis, who finished seventh and secured $1.42 million. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the main event's entry pool far outpaced the previous record of 8,773 set in 2006. "I've always kind of felt that poker was kind of going in a dying direction, but to see the numbers at the World Series this year has been incredible," Weinman said. "And to win this main event, it doesn't feel real. I mean, [there's] so much luck in a poker tournament. I thought I played very well." Steven Jones finished second, securing $6.5 million. And Adam Walton settled for third and a $4 million prize.
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