The Boston Celtics have a new owner. The drive to add more NBA championships wont change
'Coming in second is not the objective, and it's not acceptable,' private equity mogul Bill Chisholm said Tuesday after taking control of the team from Wyc Grousbeck. 'The ultimate yardstick is winning championships. Wyc's got two, and we're going to get more, and he and I together are going to help drive that.'
Chisholm leads a group that bid $6.1 billion for the Celtics — a record price for an American professional sports franchise. The NBA unanimously approved the deal last week, and all that was left was for the money to change hands on Tuesday.
'We are committed to building on the legacy of the Celtics and raising banners," Chisholm said. 'And I can't wait for the team to get back out there this fall.'
A Massachusetts native, Chisholm said his earliest Celtics memories are of the Dave Cowens, JoJo White and John Havlicek teams that won two NBA titles in the 1970s, but he really fell hard for the teams with Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale that added three more banners to the Boston Garden rafters in the '80s.
'I became a rabid fan during the Bird, McHale, Parish era. That was my team,' Chisholm said in an interview with The Associated Press shortly after the deal was finalized. 'How can you be a teenager in Massachusetts, or New England, with that group and not end up being a lifelong Celtics fan?'
The team was put on the market last summer, soon after Tatum and Brown vanquished the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA finals. Chisholm won the bidding in March and leads a group that now has majority ownership control of the team, with full control coming by 2028 at a price that could bring the total value to $7.3 billion.
That's the highest price ever paid for a team in the four major North American sports, though a piece of the Los Angeles Lakers changed hands this summer at a price that would value the entire franchise at $10 billion.
Other investors include Aditya Mittal, Bruce Beal, Andrew Bialecki, Dom Ferrante, Rob Hale, Mario Ho and Ian Loring. Sixth Street is also a 'major participant' in the investment group, the team said in a news release.
Grousbeck and co-owner Steve Pagliuca led a group that bought the Celtics in 2002 for $360 million and presided over an era in which the Celtics won two NBA titles, lost in the finals two other times and made the playoffs in 20 of 23 seasons. The team's most recent title came in 2024, led by Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
Team president Rich Gotham, general manager Brad Stevens and coach Joe Mazzulla are all expected to remain in their positions. Chisholm will represent the team in league matters as governor, with Grousbeck staying on as co-owner, CEO and alternate governor to run the day-to-day operations alongside Chisholm.
'We've got a really solid core to the roster. We've got, I think, the best basketball people that there are. And we've got a really talented business operations team,' Chisholm said. "And then we've got a leader like Wyc. I mean, why would you go make major changes to that?
'I think there are things we can always improve on,' he said. 'But that is a really, really good place to start.'
Grousbeck said he can already tell that Chisholm understands the significance of owning one of the NBA's charter franchises, with its unmatched 18 championships and a history of Hall of Famers from Red Auerbach, Bob Cousy and Bill Russell to Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.
'It's an unbelievable responsibility, and an unbelievable thrill,' Grousbeck said. 'But it's a huge challenge because the greats built it. And we're just here trying to maintain the legacy, which is a great honor.'
Chisholm takes over the team in a bit of a transition just two seasons after its latest title.
Tatum is recovering from surgery to repair the ruptured right Achilles tendon injury he suffered in Boston's Eastern Conference semifinal loss to the New York Knicks, dooming the Celtics' hopes of a repeat. Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis — key parts of the title-winning team — were traded to avoid the NBA's punitive second apron payroll tax.
Grousbeck said the days of outspending opponents to win championships are over.
'We had our two years at supermax, 100 mph, and now you take a year to reset a little bit, which every team will be doing,' Grousbeck said. 'And we'll be back. We're coming back as hard as we can.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
11 minutes ago
- Mint
Trump's trade victims are shrugging off his attacks
The 'Trump Round" of trade negotiations, as Jamieson Greer, America's trade representative, calls it, was meant to reassert American primacy. Peter Navarro, a longtime adviser to Donald Trump, even suggested that the president deserved a Nobel prize in economics for showing how the world's biggest market can bend global commerce to its will. The White House's bet is that dismantling the old order, once policed—however fitfully—by the World Trade Organisation, will usher in a new one with America at its centre. Yet by acting as if America remains the axis of world trade, Mr Trump may be accelerating its shift elsewhere. The world's biggest market is less central in global trade today than it once was. At the start of the century, America accounted for a fifth of global imports; today it makes up just an eighth. Even as countries strike tariff deals with Mr Trump to secure market access, they are drawing up alternatives. As one South Korean official puts it, 'The first step is to make concessions to America. The second is to look elsewhere." Around the world, governments are hedging against the end of the old economic order in different ways. Some are propping up local firms with subsidies and protectionism. Others are seeking new markets. And the boldest are forging alliances to counterbalance America's clout. The choice for many is not between deference to Washington or a Hobbesian state of nature, but between short-term fixes and longer-term alternatives. Given Mr Trump's predilection for levies and the tendency for taxes to outlast their creator, handouts to trade-war victims risk wasting money and distorting markets. Brazil has unveiled a $6bn credit package, which includes tax holidays and state-purchasing guarantees. With public finances already strained, the plan spooked investors. Canada has taken a similar approach, pledging nearly $1bn to support its lumber industry. South Africa's trade ministry has proposed policies to let exporters co-ordinate on shipping costs and jointly build infrastructure, even if that means skirting antitrust rules. Others are reaching for blunter tools. Canada and Japan are slapping new levies on metal imports. Meanwhile, India is doubling down on its 'Made in India" campaign. On August 15th Narendra Modi, the country's prime minister, extolled self-reliance in everything from energy to fighter jets. 'If we continue to be vocal for local, we will achieve prosperity," he declared. Although so far there has not been much retaliation against Mr Trump, the risk is that copycat protectionism multiplies, raising costs for everyone. Global is noble More promising is the search for new markets. From Asia to Africa, governments are nudging companies abroad with export funds and incentives. Singapore and South Korea, for instance, are bankrolling small firms to scout out opportunities in South Asia, the Middle East and Mexico. Some are already redirecting trade. South African farmers are sending more produce to China and pushing the EU to relax its citrus-health rules. Lesotho's garment-makers—once geared to American firms like Gap and Levi's—are turning to regional buyers and testing demand in Asia. Brazil's coffee exporters, hit with a 50% American tariff, are stepping up shipments to North Africa and the Middle East, where sales volumes rose by three-fifths last year. Yet even with such diversification, replacing America, still the destination for 16% of Brazil's beans, will take time. Most consequential are the new alliances. Canada and Mexico, America's two neighbours and partners in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) are edging closer as America becomes less reliable. Next month Mark Carney, Canada's prime minister, will visit Mexico, where he is set to discuss supply-chain resilience, port-to-port trade and joint ventures in energy and artificial intelligence. With the USMCA trade pact up for review next year, the two countries are hoping to create leverage they can use against Mr Trump. Many of the BRICS countries—a club of 11 emerging economies including Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa—have been targets of Mr Trump's ire, most recently with his levies of 50% on Brazil and India. In response, Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), has worked the phones to rally allies. On August 7th he and Mr Modi discussed closer ties, including digital-payments links that could chip away at the dominance of American banks. Four days later Lula spoke with Xi Jinping, China's leader, about deepening trade, after which Mr Xi declared relations with Brazil to be 'at their best in history". When it comes to trade, the bloc is hardly beholden to America. Uncle Sam buys only a sixth of Indian goods and a seventh of Brazilian exports, the latter down from a quarter two decades ago. As a group, the BRICS members now trade more goods with one another than with America and the gap is widening. Integration is accelerating after Mr Trump's tariffs. Over a dozen countries, including Thailand and Vietnam, have sought partner-country status or applied to join. The biggest winner from the new alliances may be China. Its exports to the global south have doubled since 2015—and it sells more to South and South-East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East than to America and western Europe. In July, even as exports to America collapsed, its overall exports grew by 7% from a year earlier. Mr Trump's tariffs have deepened these links. In June Mr Xi pledged to scrap nearly all duties on imports from Africa, and he is attending summits with Latin American and South-East Asian leaders. China and the Association of South-East Asian Nations—home to a quarter of the world's people and a fifth of its GDP—are revamping their free-trade deal, due to be ratified by the year's end. Relations with India, meanwhile, are thawing. Indian firms are exploring joint projects with Chinese counterparts in electric vehicles and batteries; this month Mr Modi is expected to visit China for the first time in seven years. Mr Trump wanted America at the centre of world trade. Things are not going to plan.
Indian Express
11 minutes ago
- Indian Express
The affection economy
Any epoch has an underlying currency that determines how power is distributed, partnerships are formed, and international relations are managed. In the distant past, it was fertile land. Then it was mineral resources. More recently, it has been demography, innovation or creativity that determined value, national purpose, and global power. As old orders replace themselves, new economic forms emerge. The emergence of the information age gave us the data economy and the attention economy. In today's world — decoupled, divided, atomistic — another term must receive our consideration: The affection economy. Success today — in trade, in innovation, in the creation of value — depends upon how skillfully you curate a community, how effectively you kindle kinship, how carefully you nurture cohorts. Cohorts, kinships, communities: They are the building blocks of co-operation and economic success. We have already seen glimmerings of this understanding permeate even the most rational, realist spheres of international relations. What, after all, do we mean when we speak of 'like-minded' nations? Like-mindedness creates commonality. It creates a shared purpose and ensures a common direction. It means trust endures even through the temporary turbulence of the sort that the American president is currently inflicting. The affection economy has visible effects on the corporate world as well. Both companies and countries compete for affection; they expand their footprint through a dedication to empathetic engagement and care. The smartest places, like Dubai, have designed entire demographic and growth policies around curated communities. Visas are offered apparently for commercial reasons, but actually to create a golden cohort of affection. The purpose of their national policy is to make people embrace Dubai. Like Dubai, fly Dubai, buy Dubai, live Dubai. The UAE may be the perfect exemplar, but it is not the only one. Other countries are constructing or have constructed soft power strategies around communities of interest. Germany is one; Australia and New Zealand, too — and of course Singapore. Corporations have done it. In India, the stakeholder capitalism that Dhirubhai Ambani fostered — filling stadiums with tens of thousands of co-owners of the Reliance enterprise — offers an analogy. It percolates to the company's thinking even today, with the equity community being succeeded by the data equity community, taking broadband to the bottom of the pyramid. The US is a special case. Companies like Apple have built on that foundation to create global production and consumption networks that look to California for inspiration. The federal government has largely let the American private sector run the affection economy. It is this stored-up affection capital that President Donald Trump is running down so speedily. What differentiates countries and companies today is the networks they lead. It has long been taken for granted that China lacked soft power, that it was respected but not loved. In the 21st century, this placed a hard ceiling on its rise. The US had no such hard ceiling till it constructed one for itself. How has the affection economy come to dominate? The flattening of the world by digital technology has had something to do with it. It replaced organic connections created by neighbourhoods and workplaces with the more diffuse, detached and delicate bonds that are created online. But this and individualisation have been in progress for decades. Political scientist Robert Putnam developed a theory in the 1990s of 'social capital', explaining how person-to-person connections were foundational for modern America. In his book Bowling Alone, he argued that this social capital was on the decline, taking civic consciousness with it. This would cause problems, as the community was the true determinant and differentiator of success. Francis Fukuyama demonstrated in his book Trust (1995) how social capital created trust within nations, and how trust led to stability and economic growth. Putnam is not surprised that the desolation of communities has caused the rise of extreme movements. Political activist Steve Bannon has publicly said that Bowling Alone inspired him and others to identify their political movement as a cure for the social isolation felt by many Americans. This phenomenon is being replicated around the world: Individualistic societies are abandoning their lonely members to such extreme communities. These groups and movements may be only a dark imitation of the true solidarity and fellowship that creates trust, but they are still communities for those who have no other. The final push that transformed global society would have to be a global event. Covid provided that impetus. It was a period when isolation deepened, the workplace became irrelevant, and the appeal of the solo actor was enhanced. Today, the digital nomad and the lone-wolf terrorist are two sides of the same coin. The future will belong to those who best understand that advancements in the technology and economic realms have brought human collectives back a full circle socially. We have indeed returned to a primal state, where communities matter more than anything else. The currency for prosperity, influence and well-being at this time is care and belonging. Prime Minister Narendra Modi read this right when he spoke of vasudhaiva kutumbakam: One Earth, One Family, One Future. It is indeed the time for a return on and to affection. The writer is president, Observer Research Foundation
Time of India
24 minutes ago
- Time of India
PlayStation prices rise as US tariffs bite
Sony on Wednesday said it is bumping up the price of PlayStation 5 video game consoles by $50 in the United States due to a "challenging economic environment." Tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump hike the cost of goods brought into the US, leaving companies like Japan's Sony to decide whether to pass that on to consumers. "Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment," Sony Interactive Entertainment vice president of global marketing Isabelle Tomatis said in a post. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like When the Camera Clicked at the Worst Possible Time Read More Undo After initially being threatened with a 25 percent hike, Japan negotiated a 15 percent tariff with the Trump administration. "As a result, we've made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price for PlayStation 5 consoles in the US." Live Events The new price for PS5 will be $550, with a "Digital Edition" priced at $500 and a Pro version for $750, according to Tomatis. In May, Sony warned it was considering tweaking prices in the US, estimating that tariffs could wind up costing the company about $680 million in the fiscal year. American companies are feeling the crunch, too. New York-based cosmetics giant Estee Lauder recently estimated the impact of the new tariffs at around $100 million for the 2026 financial year and plans to adjust its prices to offset the additional cost. US snack giant PepsiCo could increase prices of its soft drinks about 10 percent to mitigate effects of US tariffs, particularly those on imported aluminum used to make soda cans, according to trade magazine Beverage Digest. Meanwhile, California-based energy drink maker Monster Beverages is considering raising prices due to a "complex and dynamic customs landscape," according to chief executive Hilton Schlosberg. The Commerce Department this week said the US broadened its steel and aluminum tariffs, impacting hundreds more products that contain both metals such as child seats, tableware and heavy equipment. Since returning to the presidency, Trump has imposed tariffs on almost all US trading partners. Though the impact of Trump's tariffs on consumer prices has been limited so far, economists warn that their full effects are yet to be seen. Some businesses have coped by bringing forward purchases of products they expected will encounter tariffs. Others have passed on additional costs to their consumers, or absorbed a part of the fresh tariff burden.
