According to ESPN, Jordan is having serious discussions about selling a significant portion of the organisation to a group that includes Gabriel Plotkin, a minority owner of the Charlotte Hornets, and Rick Schnall, a minority owner of the Atlanta Hawks. According to the report, even if the transaction were to go through, Jordan would continue to own a minority interest in the Hornets.
Jump Management, which serves as Jordan’s family office, issued the following statement in response to reports and supposition: “We do not comment on gossip and speculation.”
In 2019, Jordan made a deal with Plotkin, who was the creator of Melvin Capital, and Daniel Sundheim, who was the founder of DI Capital, to sell them a portion of the Hornets. According to an article published by The Observer at the time, although the two financiers located in New York were brought on board, Michael Jordan continued to control 97% of the Hornets’ ownership.
In 2010, Jordan gave Bob Johnson approximately $180 million to assume overwhelming control of the expansion franchise. In exchange for this payment, Jordan received approximately 65 percent of the ownership in the NBA expansion club from Johnson. At that time, the valuation of the team was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $287 million, which was lower than the $300 million expansion charge that Johnson had given to the NBA seven years before Jordan’s acquisition of the team. According to estimates provided by Forbes in 2019, the value of the Hornets was approximately $1.3 billion.
During Jordan’s stewardship of the Hornets over the past decade, the team has had a difficult time putting everything together. They have only made it to the semifinals twice and are currently in the middle of a drought that has lasted for the past six years and will continue for another year as a result of Charlotte’s record of 22-49 this season. In Jordan’s 11 years and more at the leadership of the Hornets organisation, the team has compiled an overall record of 418-600 and has gone through a total of five head coaches, including Steve Clifford’s return to the position following James Borrego’s dismissal.
Since his well-publicized and lighthearted head smack of Malik Monk in 2018, Jordan has been seen around the squad less frequently and less frequently in public, and this trend has continued in recent times. Following his record-breaking donation of $10 million to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, he sat on the sideline for the second half of the Hornets’ game against the Magic earlier this month. He was in town to meet with some children from the organisation to discuss their wishes.
