Wyc Grousbeck on how he ended up owning the Boston Celtics
Explaining how he more or less grew up in the team's home arena, and while attending a game during the dark ages of the franchise in the post-Larry Bird, pre-New Big Three era, Grousbeck began to wonder what was going on with the team (and the arena in particular, which was only half full of fans). Wondering who the team's owner at the time was, Grousbeck asked around. "They said, 'Oh, he lives down in New York. Turns out to be a very nice guy.' I went to find him," he explained. "They said he hadn't been here in three and a half, four years. He hadn't come to the games."
Wondering if he might be convinced to sell the team given its then-distressed state, Grousbeck tracked him down. "I go down, find him, shake his hand, and say, 'What do you want?' I said, 'I'd like to buy the Celtics.' And he goes, 'They're not for sale.' I said, 'Well, is there a crazy number?' And he named a crazy number—way too high, really," continued Grousbeck. "But I didn't have the money."
"I said, 'I don't have the money, but I'll get it in four months—three and a half months,'" recalled the Celtics CEO. "So I didn't give him a chance. I took his price. I didn't negotiate. He named the number—it was a record—and I just said, 'Okay, I figure I can probably get it.' Then I said, 'I'll wire you this much next week to keep—just keep it as a deposit.'"
"I named a number, which wasn't very much for the team, but it was a lot for me. And he goes, 'All right, what's he going to do?' He had to say yes—free money. So I shake his hand, go home, mortgage my house, send him the money. And then three months later, I had 25 partners. We had all the money."
The rest, as they say, is history.
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