John Henry And Fenway Sports Group Needs To Stay The Hell Away From The Boston Celtics
When we first got the Woj bomb that Wyc Grousbeck and his partners were putting the Celtics up for sale about 15 seconds after it was announced they were extending Derrick White to a max extension, it was certainly a shock. You don't exactly see a team that just won the NBA title immediately turn around and be put up for sale, but I guess you can't fault an ownership group for wanting to cash in on a $5B+ asset that only cost them $320M to buy. I'm not a huge math or finance guy, but that ROI seems pretty good!
There's still a lot of unknown around the parameters of this sale, things that us on the outside will most likely never know. Given how the team is split up in terms of what share everyone owns, are they required to just go with the highest bidder? Does it matter who that person is as long as they are coming with the cash? Could it be Saudi oil money, or Jeff Bezos, or maybe keeping it in-house with Steve Pagliuca?
After a few weeks of no movement, it appears like things are starting to pick up around this sale
It's no surprise that almost immediately after we hear about the team moving forward and selecting the bankers to help with the sale (like Wyc mentioned a few weeks ago they'd be doing), that we get reports like this
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Let me be as crystal clear as I possibly could about this. John Fenway and FSG need to STAY THE FUCK AWAY from the Boston Celtics. I don't care who they go with as long as it's not John Henry. You want the Saudi oil money? Fine. You want to fork your franchise over the Jeff Bezos like we all have done with almost every aspect of our lives with Amazon? Go nuts. You want to give it to Pags because he's been on this ride the whole 20+ years? Fantastic choice.
But under no circumstances should Wyc/the Celts even consider selling this team to John Henry. That is a death sentence. In my opinion there would be no quicker way to destroy all the good will that this NBA title has brought Wyc and the team other than forking things over to that asshole. And I get it, he turned around the Sox and won 4 World Series. That was awesome. It was also at a time when he actually cared. Ever since FSG became a thing, John Henry has destroyed the Sox.
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You think John Henry is going to be open to paying the $400M luxury tax bills this current roster is set to start having? The same guy who fumbled Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts etc? No chance in hell. At this point John Henry and FSG care about one thing and one thing only. Turning a profit. If you have to pay a shit ton of money to keep your talent, it cuts into your profit. If you want to keep things local, just give the team to Pags!
There's also of course the LeBron angle when it comes to FSG, since he has a stake in it. The NBA prevents him from being able to be a player/owner while in the league, so I'm sure there is a whole bunch of legal nonsense that would have to go on in order for FSG to purchase the Celts. Here's a pretty good write-up about that whole situation that I recommend reading
I'm not sure how that impacts the first half of the sale since LeBron would still be an active player, but by the second wave maybe he'd be retired and it's a non-issue.
But this isn't about LeBron. This is about keeping John Henry as far away as possible from a team that looks to be on the verge of doing something special. My only requirements for the new owner or ownership group are simple.
1. You must accept and bow down to our lord and savior Brad Stevens. He calls the shots, you do what he wants without questioning it.
2. You must be willing to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on luxury tax and second apron penalties to keep this roster together for as long as this current window is open
3. You believe in Mazzulla Ball and everything it stands for
4. You are not John Henry and FSG
That's it. In my opinion, that's not even a crazy ask. At the very least, it's the bare minimum.
This is why the unknown parameters around the sale are so important. Is Wyc (and really it's his Dad) able to truly decide who to sell the team to, regardless of price? Or are they required to fork it over to whoever offers the most cash? It seems crazy to me that they would look at what Henry and FSG has been doing with the baseball team in the same city, how the fanbase has reacted to all that shit, and then decide that FSG was the way to go moving forward for the Celtics. Maybe they don't care at that point since they'd be cashing in $5B+, but man Wyc would instantly go from one of the most legendary owners in Boston Sports history to public enemy #1 in the blink of an eye.
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I don't care if I have to start the GoFundMe myself. I am more than confident that if every single person who hates John Henry with a passion were to chip in, we could easily get to $5B+. That may seem like an insane number, but that's how much this guy sucks.
Again, I'm not a math guy so don't ask me to break down what that would be per person, but desperate times call for desperate measures and we as a region need to do everything in our power to make sure this shit doesn't happen.