MJ got the Bobcats at crack prices at a time when you didn’t have cats like Ballmer with insane money who could buy anything but didn’t know shīt about sports.
The days of an owner who is solely focused on the team and not some conglomerate company that makes them wayyy more $ is coming to an end.
Those old school owners are cashing out in the age of super inflated valuations, insane TV deals, regional sports networks (for teams that have them) and they know they can get mini bidding wars popping off.
Meanwhile, LeBron simply doesn’t have the cash to be a majority owner and definitely not a sole owner. Every dime he has liquid probably gets him like 4% of a team since he could cobble up $3-400 million cash and drain everything he has out. That’s big boy $ to us of course but his true value is optics, ambassadorship and (definitely) as a mascot to butter the league up — and the other owners who have to sign off on it.
His paper could go way longer in the MLS but that shīt just won’t hit the same.