Yang Yi: Yang Hansen returned to the Trail Blazers to report and found that the team boss had replaced him?

After the Celtics and Lakers sold sky-high prices of $6.1 billion and $10 billion respectively, the Portland Trail Blazers also changed hands and were sold at a good price of $4 billion - Chinese player Yang Hansen has not yet officially represented the Trail Blazers in the new season, and the team has undergone new changes.

The former boss Paul Allen has passed away for 7 years. Her sister Jody Allen is more concerned about real estate and movies. Like all family management teams, the first generation who personally operated has passed away. The second generation who is not interested in basketball is more inclined to sell the team to cash out. The Trail Blazers just officially announced their team sale in May, which attracted the attention of Texas financier Paul Dunton. On August 14, local time, the two parties initially reached a US$4.2 billion acquisition agreement. Green US dollar bills gushed out from the black and white texts. In just six years, the NBA welcomed the tenth new boss.

Although the amount of the team sold this time is not as much as the Hukai Wealthy Family, the deal is still a huge profit for the Allen family. In 1988, Microsoft founder Paul Allen bought the Trail Blazers for $70 million, and now it has increased by 57 times, with an annualized return of 12%, comparable to Buffett's investment in Coca-Cola.

And the Allen family also accurately hit the high point of the team's market value. In 2022, Nike founder Phil Knight, joined forces with the Dodgers boss, to acquire the Trail Blazers with a offer of more than 2 billion yuan. For Jody at that time, this offer was very reasonable and reasonable. Forbes valued the Trail Blazers in the 21-22 season at $2.1 billion. Knight himself is a Portlander, and Nike's headquarters is also located in Portland. It can be said that he met his fellow villagers and filled the box with cash. But Jody politely declined this sincere offer. After just three years, she waited for a sky-high broadcast of new contracts, a new round of league expansion, and a surge in market value of NBA teams.

For the new boss Dunton, the money is not outrageous. He does not pay alone, but takes a collective investment with a consortium. Moreover, Dunton is similar to Paul Allen, both professional players who are good at sports investment. Dunton was born in New York. Although he grew up in Texas, he has the financial thinking of his hometown Wall Street. He specialized in economics in college. After graduation, he opened a restaurant to try the waters. He then founded an automobile financing company, and since then embarked on the road of finance and investment. Dungton's big hands are spread across Texas' medical, automotive and real estate industries. In 2017, he began to enter the sports circle, acquired shares in the NFL Carolina Hurricanes, and gradually became the Hurricanes' sole owner within four years. As soon as Dunton took control of the majority of his shares, he began to replace executives and coaching staff. As soon as he reached 2019, the Hurricanes returned to the playoffs after 10 years and reached the Eastern Conference Finals in one go. After Dunton took all his shares in 2021, he immediately adjusted his team's lineup drastically, and the effect was immediate - he won the highest regular season victory record in team history and won the Metropolitan Division Championship for the first time.

Dunton's transformation of the Hurricanes was quite successful. After the first shot was fired, his ambitions remained unabated. In 2019, he announced that he would inject $250 million into the minor league AAF, helping the new league, which had been established for less than a year, overcome the financial crisis. But less than two months later, Downton suddenly suspended his investment in AAF (the reason is that the NFL Players Association is unwilling to share players). The poor minor league, the big artery was cut off by his savior just started the game.

After the rugby world, Dundon extended his capital's hand to the emerging field of pickle ball (playing small tennis with large table tennis racquets in badminton courts, cleverly avoiding the inherent shortcomings of the three sports). He acquired the world's largest Peak Ball retail website by the end of 2021, and also invested in integrating Peak Ball Professional Tour (PPA), online teaching and e-commerce platforms. He even invited Mark Cuban to be the first team owner of his league, which was very popular in the circle for a while.

But this was just his first move. Less than two months after everything was ready, Dungton officially announced that it would merge with the American Professional Peak Ball League (MLP). Such a sudden speed surprised everyone. On the new track of Peak Ball, a fast-growing new development, Dungton bypassed the possible inversion risks of the two major leagues and quickly advanced to the stage of win-win cooperation.

It can be seen that Dundon is not like Clippers boss Ballmer. He insists on buying and buying every year with his love, nor is he like Suns boss Ishbiya, who has a brainless Soha team in the future. He is more like a professional chess party who takes one step and three steps. He bets immediately when he feels that there is a benefit, and stops losses immediately when he feels something is wrong. The Trail Blazers under Dunton are expected to usher in new prosperity like the Hurricanes. No matter how bad they are, they can still obtain a long-term and stable lower limit. After all, not everyone has the courage to lose 4 billion yuan.

In just six years, one-third of the NBA teams have replaced new bosses, and every transaction has made the original boss a big profit. Even Jordan, who has a very poor vision, sold the Hornets at a high price of $3 billion in 2023, making nearly 10 times. Not to mention that Prokolov invested 200 million to buy the Nets, and earned 3.3 billion from Boss Cai nine years later. Don’t look at how loud the Bucks boss complained about “losing money while winning”, last year he sold 10% of his equity alone was worth $400 million, and the purchase price of the entire Bucks ten years ago was only $550 million.

Unknown to you, the four major league teams in North America have become the most valuable targets in the investment industry. No matter how much we hate Xiao Hua's operations, we have to admit that from players to bosses, he has made everyone in this industry make money. The rise of the Internet and the decline of television have not affected the league at all, and even let it eat at both ends. Local cable TV networks are still giving money to the team, and streaming platforms are rushing to cooperate with the NBA, not to mention the 11-year sky-high contract signed by the league with giants such as ESPN and Amazon.

With the legalization of gambling in 2018 and the league allows private equity and sovereign wealth funds to invest together, more and more investors are starting to get ready, hoping to share a little cream on the NBA's growing new cake.. When demand is far greater than supply, the team's market value naturally becomes a seller's market, rising like the US stock market.

However, with such intensive team trading, the smart original bosses naturally saw the hidden dangers behind the madness - the global economy is declining, but the team's market value has soared in the short term. If you don't take advantage of this great opportunity to sell at a high point, and like Buffett, it will be difficult to save cash in your hands for a few years and decline.

On the other hand, the family-style operation model is no longer sustainable. Selling the team to a more professional team of managers may be the optimal solution for the "second-generation team" who are unintentional to sports. In the entire Bass family, only Jenny Bass wants to keep the team, but in the face of a 10 billion subsidy, she still makes a wiser choice. Mark Cuban also had this part of the consideration: "I'm not sure if my three children who are not yet 20 years old are willing to accept the team. If they don't, then my estate plan is a nightmare." So he sold most of the Mavericks' equity for a high price of 3.5 billion.

Of course, after selling the team, Cuban wanted to retain his voice, but was secretly caught up with Chen Cang by the new boss and Nick Harrison. When Doncic was traded, Cuban was still passionately with others online, which was a story later.

Moreover, the NBA's increasingly strict luxury tax policy directly dispels the bosses' idea of forming a Galaxy battleship. The salary slip of a team that is about to exceed 200 million will be fined seven dollars for an excess luxury tax of more than one dollar. These are heavy weights on the other end of the high market value.

But who would think so far? The NBA is still a business league after all, from players to teams, they are waiting for a price. Many bosses only bought it for eight or nine years and then sold it at a high price. Buyers and sellers passed by and silently said to each other. No matter how the team's valuation soars, as long as there are stories to write down and futures to fantasize, there will always be someone who pays for it. In this era, faith is indeed as precious as gold.