On the court, this season’s Boston Celtics are pretty drama-free on a night-to-night basis, with the only intrigue being records and potential MVP trophies.
But the team makes up for that with drama and intrigue surrounding the bidding process for the franchise’s next majority owner.
Fans have largely been kept in the dark since Wyc Grousbeck announced his family would be selling their majority stake in the team back in July, leading to a whole host of rumors about interested parties.
One of the only potential suitors who has spoken publicly about their interest in buying the majority stake is current Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca, saying in a July statement that he would be “a proud participant in the bidding process.”
Now, the New York Post is reporting that Pagliuca is trying to buy the team at a discount by convincing other minority stakeholders to support his bid. Without getting into the Succession-esque palace intrigue regarding whether the Grousbecks will look favorably upon Pagliuca’s haggling, should Celtics fans be behind his bid?
WEEI Celtics writer Meghan Ottolini says yes.
“I would love to see it personally,” Mego said Wednesday morning on The Greg Hill Show.
While Mego acknowledged that Pagliuca’s bid may be less likely to succeed given his financial disadvantage against more deep-pocketed bidders, she believes there’s still a pathway for him to succeed.
“It's just still so very early, from what I've heard in the bidding process, that I think Pags would have to have a lot of the other minority owners behind him, and he would have to have kind of the groundswell to bring a group forward,” Ottolini said.
As a majority owner, Pagliuca, who currently owns about 20% of the team, would be more likely to stay the course with the Celtics’ current managerial strategy.
“I think that sometimes we overestimate if somebody like a Jeff Bezos, not his half brother, but a Bezos or this other incredible multi-billionaire owner comes in, that they're going to do everything that's right for the team. I think Pags wants to continue the way that the team has been run since this ownership group took it over,” Mego said.
The track record of the Grousbeck-Pagliuca ownership group has been stellar for the Boston Celtics. Their only down period in the last 17 years, following the dismantling of the the Big Three-era Celtics, lasted less than two seasons.
It’s possible Pagliuca may have a better chance of winning the ownership bidding process because of the Celtics’ arena situation, where they’re locked into renting out TD Garden for the next decade.
Chris Curtis believes that the team not owning its own arena is a major deterrent for potential big-money owners.
“I know everybody thinks that a team is overvalued, and then somebody comes and swoops and pays ungodly amounts of money,” Curtis said.
“But the Celtics having another 10 years with the Bruins leasing and renting in the TD Garden, I don't know how even guys with untold amounts of money would spend $7 billion just to pay rent in one of the most expensive cities in America.”
Ottolini believes that even with a potentially contentious arena situation, the Grousbecks and the other NBA owners will not allow a low-ball offer for this marquee franchise.
“Whatever buyer comes in, 75% of the other owners in the NBA ultimately have to approve the deal and these are guys who want the value of their teams and franchises to continue going up,” Mego said.
The motivations for Celtics fans in this bidding process are clear: find an owner who will spend and keep this roster intact. But the motivation for the NBA is very different.
“It doesn’t really make sense to go, ‘Oh, we’re going to give a hometown discount,’ right?” Mego said.
“We just want the best caretaker for the team. Unfortunately, it’s a business that’s bigger than just the Celtics and just this roster. It’s about the entire league.”