NBA owners' current financial turmoil portends future payroll problems, ESPN's Brian Windhorst wrote 7/27/20, noting the challenges faced by owners who rely heavily on their team-as-business (Los Angeles Lakers) or are invested in businesses slammed by the pandemic (Houston Rockets, Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat).
Given that "roughly 40% of the league's revenues come from ticket sales and arena sponsorships," that portends changes to the current collective bargaining agreement, requiring the players to share the strains.
Some teams, in the face of losses, may trade expensive contracts or even sell a draft pick, while others are sitting pretty, positioned to spend money to gain advantage:
Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai recently sold about 25% of his shares of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, stock valued at $3.3 billion as of July 10. He denied rumors he was joining a group to purchase the New York Mets.
As NetsDaily pointed out:
Among NBA owners, Joe Tsai is doing very well. His net worth has jumped by 50 percent since he agreed to buy into the Nets back in October 2017. He’s now worth $13.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, up from $8.8 billion three years ago. In fact, he’s now the second richest NBA owner behind only Steve Ballmer of the Clippers who’s worth a staggering $73 billion, the sixth biggest fortune in the world.
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