NBA approves sale of Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Hornets

The NBA has approved the sale of Michael Jordan’s majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets franchise to a group led by businessmen Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall. The operation was approved by the league and the basketball legend will receive US$ 3 billion (R$ 15.7 billion at current quotations) for the deal. The information is from ESPN American.

In 2010, Jordan paid $275 million to become a majority owner of the Hornets. Now, he ends a 13-year stint as the majority owner of the franchise’s shares. The expectation is that the 60-year-old former player will maintain a minority stake with the conclusion of the agreement.

Schnall is a minority partner in the Atlanta Hawks and Plotkin already owned a smaller stake in the Hornets. They are waiting for the NBA to complete the verification and approval process for the deal to finally take over the franchise. According to American reporter Adrian Wojnarowski, Jordan will continue to oversee basketball operations until next Thursday’s draft and the start of the transfer window on July 1.

Born in North Carolina, Michael Jordan became a partner of the Charlotte Bobcats in 2006. Eight years later, the team underwent a reformulation and returned to adopting the name “Hornets”, original of its founding in 1988.

With the shirt of the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan was a six-time NBA champion and five-time Most Valuable Player (MVP). He is still widely considered the greatest basketball player in history. He took all his fame to the team, but that wasn’t enough to make the franchise a strong team.

The Hornets finished the 2022/23 season, won by the Denver Nuggets, penultimate in the Eastern Conference and will have the second pick in next season’s draft. The team never won an edition of the NBA and its best campaign happened in the 1997/98 edition, when they fell to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the playoffs.