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Jimmy Butler among ownership group to make offer for Crystal Palace
A consortium of sport and entertainment executives, which includes the NBA star Jimmy Butler, is expected to make an offer in excess of $200million to purchase Eagle Football’s 43 per cent stake in Premier League soccer club Crystal Palace, sources briefed on the proposed deal have told The Athletic.
During a recent appearance on WEEI, Boston’s Wyc Grousbeck detailed the drawbacks of being a second apron luxury tax team. “It’s not the luxury tax bill, it’s the basketball penalties,” Grousbeck said. “The new CBA was designed by the league to stop teams from going crazy. They decided that it’s not good enough to go after the wallets because the fans can be like, ‘Hey find someone who can afford to spend $500 million dollars a year or whatever it is, like the English Premier League..The basketball penalties mean that it’s even more of a premium now to have your basketball general manager be brilliant and lucky. Because you have to navigate because you can’t stay in the second apron, nobody will, I predict, for the next 40 years of the CBA, no one is going to stay in the second apron more than two years.”
It was a major surprise earlier this week when The Athletic reported that Jason Kidd is “part of a consortium” that has made an offer to purchase a 45% stake in Crystal Palace of the Premier League. One seemingly significant hitch: Kidd told The Dallas Morning News that the report isn’t true. When asked where the rumor might have come from, Kidd said “I don’t know,” but didn’t elaborate.
But Mazzulla’s players also know that he’ll leave no stone unturned in trying to find an edge for them. Mazzulla counts Pep Guardiola, the manager of Manchester City, as a friend, and shows his team clips of the Premier League-winning side. “It’s about the connectivity required, how all the pieces are doing their role,” said backup center Luke Kornet. “How it can just look beautiful and flow.” As for the clip that Mazzulla showed the Celtics earlier this year, of hyenas working in tandem to take down a wildebeest? “Man, was it hard to watch,” Kornet said. “I’ll tell you what, Mother Nature…” He mulled over the lesson the video imparted. “It was really about working together and trying to bring the enemy to a standstill.”
As he goes for his first NBA championship, Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla has sought some inspiration from a soccer manager who has spent 15 years racking up titles. Mazzulla was a guest at English and European champion Manchester City over the weekend, taking in its Premier League game against Chelsea on Saturday and then meeting manager Pep Guardiola at the team’s training ground on Sunday. Mazzulla and Guardiola exchanged Celtics and City jerseys. Mazzulla
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When the in-season tournament was first floated out as an idea by NBA commissioner Adam Silver, the thought was it would take place closer to the middle of the season, or perhaps be like the FA Cup in England, which stretches over the duration of the English Premier League season. Neither of those options made sense as the NBA talked to teams and began figuring out the logistics of the tournament. “The earliest iterations for this were always a mid-season tournament that would take place in the January and February time frame,” Wasch said. “As we got into this with teams, we came across two challenges with that. The first was that it was during a time of year where teams are starting to think of the playoff race and they’re looking at the standings and they’re sizing up where they are in the conference. One of the big things we didn’t want to do with this was distract from the chase for the Larry O’Brien Trophy. We didn’t want to take anything from the playoffs and the NBA Finals. The second was, some of the unique dates around that time with the trade deadline and NBA All-Star Game in February. It just felt like a mid-season tournament was going to be a distraction.”
Nance is part of a wave of NBA players who have taken stakes in professional soccer teams. LeBron James owns a piece of Liverpool in the English Premier League. James Harden (Houston Dynamo), Kevin Durant (Philadelphia Union) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (Nashville S.C.) are partial owners of Major League Soccer teams. For Nance, the investment had much more to do with his heart than his head. “I am a fan who bought into the club,” Nance said. “I like the owner title because I’m proud of it. But at the same time, I consider myself more of a heavily invested supporter.
Russell Westbrook invests in Leeds United's ownership group
NBA star Russell Westbrook has become the latest high-profile sporting figure to invest in the 49ers group that is in the process of taking over Leeds United. The group 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm of the NFL's San Francisco 49ers, has been a shareholder in Leeds since its initial investment in May 2018. Earlier this week, American golfers Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas confirmed that they had bought shares in the group, and now LA Clippers star Westbrook has joined forces with them. "I was lucky enough to have conversations with some of the partners in this deal who already have ownership, the 49ers," Westbrook said at a sports and entertainment summit held by Sportico.
Recently, The Athletic spoke with four NBA players, all big soccer fans, to get their perspective on the change, how they believe teams or players might approach it and how it compares to the major cup tournaments they watch every year. The players, who all root for different Premier League squads, have varied thoughts about what’s ahead. “I think it’s gonna be interesting,” said Bulls guard and Manchester City supporter Alex Caruso. “I am a little excited just to see how it kind of pans out. I think for me, it’s gonna be interesting to see how different teams, depending on the competition level or what the goal is (for) the team, will do with the in-season tournament. Because I can see a younger team, maybe like a Houston or Detroit that is really trying to develop the young guys to understand winning and compete at high levels, and it’s almost a little preview of playoffs. But then, I could also see maybe some of the bigger teams that maybe rest a star or two and play just like those European clubs do, where they try to win the game, but they might give the Kevin De Bruyne or Giannis or the Steph Curry the night off to try and make sure that they’re healthy for the long haul of the season.”
Abu Dhabi and Qatar investment firms interested in purchasing Knicks?
One target could be the New York Knicks. The team is owned by Madison Square Garden Sports Corp., which is controlled by the Dolan family. MSGS’s biggest equity shareholder is investment firm Silver Lake Management, which has strong ties with Abu Dhabi, and is a co-investor in Premier League giant Manchester City. Speaking on an earnings call this month, MSGS president David Hopkinson said the company was open to selling a minority stake in the Knicks.
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Kerr is also famously a soccer fan and supports Liverpool, a connection which also relates to his time in Egypt: Pharaohs star Mohamed Salah. But while Kerr loves Salah's work on the field, he's also a big fan of his humanitarian work off it: "I started following the Premier League maybe five or six years ago and I had seen Mohamed Salah play and read about him. "I was just so impressed by his character and what he had done in his hometown, helping to build a school. "I knew how beloved he was in Egypt, so I said: 'That's my guy!' I wanted to cheer for Mohamed Salah and when I found out he played for Liverpool, I said: 'Ok, that's my team!' So, I've been a Liverpool fan ever since."
What does that mean for Liverpool? This is a move that could change the landscape of sports in the U.S., and will certainly have an impact on Liverpool. Werner clearly thinks LeBron and Carter could transcend all of Fenway Sports Group, including the defending Premier League champs. Nothing will be off-limits to them. “I will be surprised actually if they don’t weigh in (on management decisions of either team), I would welcome their thoughts,” Werner said. “I think that the relationship that the consumer has with a sporting team is an emotional one. I consider Maverick to be one of my closest friends, and I’ve spent hours with him talking about strategy, coaching, the lessons that I’ve learned from (Liverpool manager) Jurgen Klopp, and the lessons that he’s learned as an astute observer of basketball.
Marc Stein: Behind-the-scenes discussions among players about kneeling and other potential postures to take during the national anthem are intensifying at the NBA Bubble as Opening Night 2.0 approaches, @NYTSports has learned, with discussions also ongoing among NBA coaches to join players. As just seen throughout the Premier League's restart in England, even though no national anthem is played before matches there, players and managers joined in kneeling before every kickoff in a unified stance in support of Black Lives Matter
Hart had eagerly anticipated a busy March and April toggling between his day job and his intoxicating hobby following Chelsea. While Hart’s soccer team had climbed into a top-four spot in the Premier League, New Orleans (28-36) was just 3 ½ games behind eighth-seeded Memphis and had the most favorable closing schedule of any team in the hunt for the West’s final playoff berth when the N.B.A. announced its indefinite suspension on March 11. “I’m not very optimistic about the season starting any time in the next two, three, four months,” Hart said. “It’s just too hard. Unless they were somehow able to build a huge hotel and an arena and put a bubble over it in some random place somewhere, that’s my only guess how to actually finish the season in the next several months. You really do have to create a bubble.”
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