The Morning Shift on 92.9 The Game

Celtics max Jayson Tatum as owners announce majority stake for sale

Tif, Mike and Beau get into the latest sports news and headlines including the Celtics ownership group announcing that they plan to sell majority stake in the franchise in addition to agreeing with Jayson Tatum on a 5-year $314M deal. And the Warriors and Klay Thompson are officially parting ways as Thompson agrees to a 3-year $50M deal.

Duration:: 7m
Broadcast on:: 02 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Now, with the MLB app, you can get baseball your way. Pick your favorite team, your favorite players, and get customized highlights, stories, and breaking news right on your home feed. Follow the action with Game Tip, where 3D replays add another dimension. Plus, notifications can keep you connected to every pinch, every hit, every game, the MLB app. Baseball your way. Download it now for free from the App Store or Google Play. Blackout and other restrictions apply. Major League Baseball trade cards used with permission. One, two, three. It's done. Take a look at today's top headlines. This is the front page on The Morning Shift. NBA Free Agency was underway, began on Sunday. Lots of moves have been made. Lots of news coming out of the Celtics camp. And this one, though, has to do with their ownership. So the majority owner puts the team up for sale just weeks after the NBA championship. The Boston basketball partners, LLC, the ownership group behind the Celtics, has put the team up for sale, according to a statement that they posted on X on Monday. The controlling family of the ownership group announced the sale of the majority stake and expects it to be completed later this year or in early 2025. I think the interesting part of this is to keep in mind is they're selling the majority stake. This is not the entire investment group that will be selling. They bought this, I think, for $360 million about 22 years ago. And when you look at the amount of money that is probably Whit Grusbeck, the majority stakeholder that he's able to get for this, it's insane, right? So you're going to have just his part. Now they are valued somewhere around $5 billion. And when you put all those numbers forward and add in the fact that you just paid everybody on that roster, you start to add the zeros up and Grusbeck's like, I'm getting out of here. I'm good. We're about to be doing a lot of money you sell when the stakes are high, so good to go. Yeah, I thought it was very interesting that one of the best NBA reporters that I've had the chance to ever be around was Chris Mannix. And he tweeted right after this news came out that some owners have become very wary of what local TV deals could look like in the years ahead. And regional sport networks are embattled. And while the new national deal will be big, future local deals may not. Mark Cuban, I think, has hinted about maybe selling the Mavericks as well. They may see this now. And he mentioned Cuban as long with Grusbeck in there. And so they may see another time while they're getting as good. And then another guy came over the top and said the NBA is moving inevitably towards an NFL model where local telecast, which already exclude most of the best games, are going to get an even smaller piece of an increasingly divided pie. So that to me sounds like that's where these owners make a ton of their money, of these regional deals. And with those going away, that makes sense that they might sell high to your point. It's not just about for the Celtics, about the NBA title titles, it's other things as well. It'll be interesting to me how this all goes because now you have this model right in the NFL where you've kind of okayed investment groups as opposed to one singular owner or majority owner. And I mean, when the numbers get as high as they are, when you're talking about $5 billion, and like I said, this is not the whole team, they're not selling the whole team. It's just his majority stake in this investment group. Well, when you start talking about that, man, you really have to have like a Los Angeles Dodgers style of squad behind it. That's going to throw their money forward and be able to do different things. And it really completely changes those ownership models. I mean, there's a lot of kind of hand, you know, kind of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to that. Yeah, and it's what happened here in the Atlanta spirit group where it was a lot of cooks in the kitchen that didn't have none of them had the entirety or majority of the ownership stake. And therefore, it really exposed the fact that none of them had any real money. But in the reality of the situation is, is you want one guy who has that 51 percent, right? And then the rest of them have big enough pockets where they can all make these moves. It begs the question to me, when I'm seeing all these numbers pop up for Derek White and Jason Tatum all the above, when I see all these numbers pop up, it leaves me asking the question, who is signing off on these on these contracts? You know what I mean? Like, if you don't have a singular majority investment kind of owner, you know what I mean? It's not like, okay, hey, we're going to pay Dak Prescott. Jerry Jones has to okay that, right? Jerry Jones makes it like, who is it that's signing off? I'm going, hey, let's pay Jason Tatum $320. Well, I think I think all of the guys that grow speck have a majority majority stake at the end of the day, right? So it's just that you have a bunch of other guys who make up the what the other 49 percent. Yeah, yeah. Well, Jason Tatum, him and the Celtics agreed on a five year, $314 million extension. And then Mike already mentioned that the Derek White deals him and the Celtics agree to a four year, 125.9 million dollar contract extension. So they are paying a lot of money for a lot of different pieces. But I guess when you have players that are that good, I guess you want to sell a good product. I mean, if that's the thing, if they're asking what groups back if they're saying, Hey, look, man, do you mind if we pay these people? He's going, dude, we got a we have a championship, not even championship caliber, a proven champion commodity here. If you want to step into these ranks and pay a few billion dollars to step right to the, you know, the forefront of the NBA and get those things done. Yeah, make it, make it run again. One more run for the title, right? You just paid Jalen Brown last year. Now Tatum and White have been paid. You're going to make at least one or two more runs before whatever happens with this team. However long you can keep them together. I'd be curious to get a report to from like a front office or a or Forbes or something like that. How much an actual NBA championship is worth financially? You know, I mean, when you look at the windfall of knowledge, just gear, but you know, putting butts in the seats for the next season and the amount of sellouts, I'd love to know how much that is worth for a franchise and whether or not, you know, it's kind of worth making those moves to go all in like you do financially and not worry about the luxury tax and everything else. And then on the flip side, how much are you able to pull away from that? Trying to figure out what to eat for dinner yet again with North sides and bullion is your not so secret ingredient, you can skip the drive through and do dinner at home. North taste combos provide a menu of delicious, affordable and well balanced meals that you can prepare in 30 minutes or less. Visit nore.com to get quick and easy recipe ideas for your home cooked weeknight dinners. It's not fast food, but it's so good. Now with the MLB app, you can get baseball your way. Pick your favorite team, your favorite players, and get customized highlights, stories and breaking news right on your home feed. Follow the action with Game10 where 3D replays add another dimension. Plus, notifications can keep you connected to every pinch, every hit, every game, the MLB app. Baseball, your way. Download it now for free from the App Store or Google Play. 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