Plotkin & Schnall Purchase Charlotte Hornets
The pair are buying the team from former owner, and NBA legend, Michael Jordan.
Ever since Michael Jordan became principal owner of the then-Charlotte Bobcats back in 2010, it has been rather apparent that MJ’s transcendent brilliance on the court wouldn’t necessarily transfer over to executive management.
After being acquired by Jordan for approximately $275 million in 2010, the Charlotte franchise (the Bobcats were rebranded as the Hornets in 2014) went 423-600 over 13 seasons, the 26th-best record over that span, while never winning a playoff series. And now – the six-time NBA champion and five-time MVP who’s widely considered the greatest player of all time – is relinquishing control of the Charlotte Hornets, having recently agreed in principle to sell his majority stake to a group of investors led by two Jewish businessmen, Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall.
Schnall, in addition to being an influential minority owner of the Atlanta Hawks and an alternate governor on the NBA Board of Governors since 2015, serves as co-president of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, a New York City-based private equity firm, where he has worked for the past 27 years following his time in the investment banking divisions of Smith Barney & Co. and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Schnall, a 53-year-old New York City resident and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Harvard Business School, leads CD&R’s financial services and technology verticals and chairs the healthcare vertical, which he launched in 2003. He is in the process of selling his investment in the Hawks, which is expected to be completed in the next several weeks. Aside from his work in finance and the NBA, Schnall serves as a board member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Plotkin, meanwhile, has been a Hornets minority owner and alternate governor on the NBA Board of Governors since 2019. A native of Portland, Maine, who received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Northwestern University, Plotkin is the founder of investment management firm Melvin Capital, which was involved in the 2021 GameStop short squeeze before closing last year. It was also in 2022 that Plotkin founded Tallwoods Capital LLC, a Miami Beach-based firm focusing on long-term investments, for which he serves as its chief investment officer.
Plotkin and his wife, Yaara Bank-Plotkin, who was born and raised in Queens, N.Y., have been honored by the Chabad Israel Center of the Upper East Side for their philanthropic efforts supporting Israeli wounded soldiers and terror victims. Plotkin has also contributed to the Young Jewish Professionals networking group by leading mentorship sessions via Zoom during the pandemic.
Schnall and Plotkin take over a Hornets franchise that many around the NBA predicted would experience a change in ownership given how it has skyrocketed in value since Jordan purchased it more than a decade ago. Additionally, it was only three years ago that Jordan hinted his days as a principal NBA owner were numbered when he sold a significant minority stake in the Hornets to Plotkin and Daniel Sundheim, founder and chief investment officer of D1 Capital, who will remain part of the new Hornets ownership group.
“In the same way that it’s wonderful that one of our greatest, Michael Jordan, could become the principal governor of a team, he has the absolute right to sell at the same time,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said at a press conference held during the NBA Finals in June. “Values have gone up a lot since he bought that team, so that is his decision.”
The price of the Hornets sale was not immediately announced, however, ESPN, citing sources, reported that the franchise was being valued at approximately $3 billion. Prior to the Hornets changing ownership, the most recent sale of an NBA team occurred when Mat Ishbia, the CEO and chairman of United Wholesale Mortgage, who also represents the Jewish community, purchased a majority stake of the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury for $4 billion back in December.
Jordan’s impending departure as principal owner of the Charlotte Hornets leaves the 30-team NBA without any Black majority ownership – a matter of concern to league commissioner Adam Silver, who, during that very same news conference, added, “I would love to have better representation in terms of principal governors. … It’s a marketplace. It’s something that if we were expanding that the league would be in a position to focus directly on that, but in individual team transactions, the market takes us where we are.”
Jordan declined comment on the impending sale through his spokesperson, Estee Portnoy, while Plotkin and Schnall have yet to make public comments.
In addition to presiding over basketball operations during last month’s NBA Draft, in which the Hornets drafted Alabama forward Brandon Miller with the second overall pick before selecting Jewish guard Amari Bailey out of UCLA in the second round, and the start of free agency on July 1, Jordan will still maintain a minority stake in the Hornets – the only NBA team in his home state of North Carolina – following the official completion of the sale, which is subject to the approval of the NBA Board of Governors. It is not definitively known how long the process of selling will take to be finalized by the NBA Board of Governors.
comments