All 30 NBA Owners, Ranked From Worst To First

Being super rich will get you an NBA team, but it won't make you a good owner.

There aren’t a lot of different ways you can end up owning an NBA team.

There’s the most common way, which is inheriting one. Your family is really rich, they buy the team and eventually, it becomes yours. By and large, the richest people in the world own NBA teams, with the average value for an NBA franchise headed into the 2023-24 season hovering around $3 billion.

Here’s the thing — no amount of money makes you a good owner, and running an NBA team isn’t like running a business. It’s a unique challenge that’s difficult to be good at, even with all the money in the world.

Here’s a look at all 30 NBA owners, ranked from worst to first.

30. New York Knicks: James Dolan

Executive chairman and Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan

Kathy Willens / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $300 million (1997)

Current team value: $6.58 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: James Dolan is at the bottom of the barrel regarding NBA owners. He’s so bad at his job that former NBA commissioner David Stern told The New York Times in 2007 that the Knicks were “not an example of intelligent management,” which was a nice way of saying Dolan’s financial recklessness was bad for the league.

Even with the vast expanse of the internet, there’s not enough space here to list all of Dolan’s misdeeds as an owner, which include using facial recognition software to target members of the media and have them banned from Madison Square Garden to perpetuating long-term sexual harassment in the Knicks’ front office.

Dolan is not just one of the worst owners in the NBA but one of the worst owners in the history of professional sports.

Note: All team values are through the 2022-23 season.

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29. Minnesota Timberwolves: Glen Taylor

Minnesota Timberwolves team owner Glen Taylor

Ann Heisenfelt / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $88.5 million (1995)

Current team value: $1.67 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor has an unusual agreement in place with Marc Lore and former MLB star Alex Rodriguez in which Lore and Rodriguez agreed to buy the Timberwolves for $1.5 billion spread over three annual payments in 2022, 2023 and 2024 before they take over full control of the team. Lore and Rodriguez made their second payment in 2023, but until the next payment goes through, Taylor is still in charge.

Taylor’s legacy with the Timberwolves will largely be centered around two side deals he made that got him in trouble. The first was a “secret contract” with former No. 1 overall pick Joe Smith that got Taylor banned for an entire season. The second was a “secret agreement” to let former star Kevin Garnett become a minority owner of the team following his retirement, which Garnett says Taylor reneged on — he called his former boss a “snake” and refuses to let the Timberwolves retire his jersey.

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28. Brooklyn Nets: Joe Tsai

Ng Han Guan / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $2.35 billion (2019)

Current team value: $3.5 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: Joe Tsai truly dropped the bag when it came to buying the Brooklyn Nets. Not only did he complete the deal for the team’s purchase at a price tag of $2.35 billion in 2019, but he also bought the team’s home arena, the Barclays Center, in a totally separate deal for $1 billion.

Unfortunately for Tsai, there has been little to no return on his pricey investments in the last four years. And that’s totally on him. Bringing in Kevin Durant as a free agent in 2019, even though you knew he wouldn’t play the first season because of an injury, was a no-brainer. Letting Durant make the team’s personnel decisions by bringing in noted malcontents/quitters Kyrie Irving and James Harden was brainless.

When we take into account that the other team in New York, the Knicks, is worth almost double the Nets’ value and that the Nets are going to suck for the foreseeable future, it’s dark times in Brooklyn.

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27. Washington Wizards: Ted Leonsis

Nick Wass / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $551 million (2010)

Current team value: $2.5 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: The Washington Wizards routinely find themselves being referred to as one of the NBA’s worst franchises, which isn’t quite fair. If you look at the last decade, they’ve been in the playoffs five times and have even won a playoff series in three of those seasons.

The big knock on Leonsis over the years has been that Wizards fans think he cares more about the other team he owns in the city — the NHL’s Washington Capitals — but there’s not a lot of proof to back that up other than the Capitals are more successful than the Wizards.

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26. Sacramento Kings: Vivek Ranadive

Jeff Chiu / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $534 million (2013)

Current team value: $2.03 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: Vivek Ranadive is one of many NBA owners on this list who have seen their initial, modest (by billionaire standards) investment turn into a golden goose — he’s also leading the pack of bad basketball played by his team.

Ranadive led a group of investors that purchased the Sacramento Kings from the Maloof brothers in 2013, but he didn’t see the longest playoff drought in North American professional sports come to an end until a decade later when the Kings lost in the first round of the NBA playoffs. It was their first appearance in the postseason in 16 years.

Ranadive’s only truly notable moment in 10 years as an owner came in 2014 when he openly suggested deploying a “4-on-5” defensive strategy that allowed one player to cherry-pick on offense. We can’t make this stuff up.

Check out all the latest Sacramento Kings gear.

25. New Orleans Pelicans: Gayle Benson

New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson

Matthew Hinton / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $338 million (2012)

Current team value: $1.63 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: While fans complain that Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis cares more about his NHL team than he does his NBA team, there doesn’t seem to be much to back that up. For the New Orleans Pelicans, however, this is very much a reality. The team is treated like a red-headed stepchild by its ownership group led by Gayle Benson, who inherited both the Pelicans and the NFL’s New Orleans Saints from her late husband, Tom Benson.

Here, they don’t even pretend the NBA team matters despite having two No. 1 overall picks in the last 11 years. The second of which, Zion Williamson, has only played 114 regular-season games in four seasons. They don’t care about the NBA in New Orleans. Owners, fans, players … whoever. But it starts at the top.

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24. Charlotte Hornets: Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin

Chuck Burton / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $3 billion (2023)

Current team value: $3 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: This is the only team we had to do some seriously creative accounting with after the Charlotte Hornets were valued at just a shade under $2 billion before the 2022-23 season, and then Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin paid a reported $3 billion for them in July 2023. So, we’ll just say that their value is what the new owners are actually willing to pay for them.

While we don’t know what kind of owners Schnall and Plotkin will be, we can only hope that they’ll be better than the last owner, NBA legend Michael Jordan, who purchased the team for approximately $200 million in 2010 and once again shows why he’s unparalleled as an athlete/businessman.

What Jordan showed he can’t do in the last 13 years is run a team. The Hornets haven’t made the playoffs since 2017 and, before that, only made the playoffs twice in his time as an owner. In fact, the Hornets haven’t won a playoff series since 2002 — a problem that even pre-dates Jordan.

Check out all the latest Charlotte Hornets gear.

23. Houston Rockets: Tilman Fertitta

Rick Bowmer / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $2.2 billion (2017)

Current team value: $3.2 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: The son of a local seafood restaurant owner in Galveston, Texas, Tilman Fertitta made his fortune as one of the co-founders of the Landry’s Seafood restaurant chain in the early 1980s, expanding his business empire to include some of the more recognizable restaurant chains in the U.S. as well as the Golden Nugget Hotels and Casinos. He eventually bought the Houston Rockets when he outbid Beyonce Knowles with a whopping $2.2 billion in 2017.

We really wish the NBA could’ve made the Beyonce deal work because Fertitta has been an absolute downer as an owner, and the Rockets have been arguably the NBA’s worst team over the last three seasons. What did we expect from an owner who wrote a book about his business empire called “Shut Up and Listen!”

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22. Orlando Magic: Dan DeVos

Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $85 million (1991)

Current team value: $1.85 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: The Orlando Magic have made the playoffs just twice in the last decade and haven’t won a playoff series since 2011 — a streak that’s easy to see ending in the near future with what seems like an All-NBA talent on the roster in power forward and 2022 No. 1 overall pick Paolo Banchero.

The Magic began play in 1989, and Dan Devos’ father, Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, purchased the team in 1991. Dan has been chairman of the team since 2011 and has overseen the worst stretch of basketball in franchise history. He shouldn’t take all the blame, though, because the Magic have a history of bad basketball decisions that date back to the early 1990s.

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21. Atlanta Hawks: Tony Ressler

Todd Kirkland / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $730 million (2015)

Current team value: $1.975 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: Buying an NBA franchise that’s bad and making it better is a long game, but one decade into Tony Ressler’s tenure as the owner of the Atlanta Hawks — he led an investment group that included former NBA star Grant Hill and Spanx founder Sara Blakeley — the results haven’t been very promising.

The Hawks are still almost $1 billion below the average value of an NBA franchise because they give very little back to their fans in terms of value with the product on the court. Right now, they have a petulant star in Trae Young and are on their third head coach in four years. That run to the 2021 Eastern Conference Finals looks more and more like a fluke.

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20. Phoenix Suns: Mat Ishbia and Justin Ishbia

Matt York / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $4 billion (2023)

Current team value: $4 billion

NBA championships as owners: None

Bottom line: Longtime sports writer/podcaster Bill Simmons has long had a theory about owning a professional sports team that he calls “New Owner Syndrome” (NOS) — essentially that when a really rich person takes control of a pro sports team, they feel an overwhelming sense to make a huge move to show everybody they mean business. And it almost always backfires.

New Phoenix Suns owners Mat Ishbia and Justin Ishbia fell victim to NOS after buying the team in December 2022 and trading for Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant. Durant battled injuries following his trade that limited him to just eight regular-season games, and the Suns got booted out of the playoffs in the Western Conference Semifinals for the second year in a row. Owning a team is harder than it looks!

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19. Indiana Pacers: Herb Simon

Michael Conroy / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $10.5 million (1983)

Current team value: $1.8 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: It’s kind of fitting that Herb Simon bought the Indiana Pacers in the 1980s when his Simon Property Group was in its heyday developing shopping malls across the U.S.

Who could have thought the Pacers would turn out to be one of his greatest investments? Even in terms of what the $10.5 million he paid for the team in 1983 is in today’s money — $32.1 million — turning that into a franchise about to pass the $2 billion mark is impressive.

What’s not impressive is being a full $1 billion behind the average value of an NBA team in 2023, which the Pacers can directly contribute to not having made the playoffs for the last three seasons and not having won a playoff series since 2014. Pacers fans don’t expect their team to win the title every year, but they do expect them to be competitive in the Eastern Conference.

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18. Detroit Pistons: Tom Gores

Carlos Osorio / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $325 million (2011)

Current team value: $1.9 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: Tom Gores’ business sense is almost unparalleled on this list — he was the last wave of NBA owners to get a “bargain” deal on a team in the early 2010s. He’s also unique in that he’s the sole owner of the Pistons, meaning he controls 100 percent of the team’s shares.

The reason the Pistons are almost $1 billion behind the average value of an NBA franchise in 2023 is because they’re terrible, and they’ve been terrible for a long time. They’ve had just one winning season in the last 15 years, made the playoffs just twice since 2011 and haven’t won a playoff series in that time. Gores seems like he could be a good owner, but his team hasn’t done much to back him up yet.

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17. Utah Jazz: Ryan Smith

Rob Gray / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $1.66 billion (2021)

Current team value: $2.025 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: It’s still too early in tech-billionaire Ryan Smith’s tenure to determine what type of owner he’s going to be, but the fact that one of his first big moves was to turn over the team’s day-to-day operations to Danny Ainge tells us a lot. Ainge has been making big moves and fleecing other NBA general managers in trades for the last two years, and the Jazz now has a talented young roster and lots of room to maneuver with draft picks and signing free agents in the future.

The team also has one of the NBA’s best young head coaches in Will Hardy. Buy your Jazz stock now, everybody.

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16. Toronto Raptors: Larry Tanenbaum

Tony Avelar / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $467 million (1998)

Current team value: $3.1 billion

NBA championships as owner: 1 (2019)

Bottom line: The most improbable NBA championship in the last 30 years belongs to the Toronto Raptors, which used one year with Kawhi Leonard in his prime alongside a team of role players and an undrafted point guard in Fred VanVleet to upset the two-time defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

When a team is flourishing and you don’t hear much about the owner, we should consider that a good thing. That’s the case with Larry Tanenbaum, who actually owns a 25 percent stake in professional sports and real-estate company Maple Leafe Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Raptors, NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs, MLS team Toronto FC and the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts.

Check out all the latest Toronto Raptors gear.

15. Philadelphia 76ers: Josh Harris and David Blitzer

Randall Benton / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $287 million (2011)

Current team value: $3.15 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: The two founders of Harris-Blitzer Sports Entertainment made one of the greatest sports investments in recent memory when they purchased the Philadelphia 76ers for a song — $287 million — in 2011. Just a little over a decade later, the franchise is now worth more than $3 billion … if only simply making money made you a good owner.

Over the last decade, no NBA team has been under more of a microscope for how it’s run than the 76ers, who brought “The Process” to the masses. And all that really meant was being purposefully terrible for an extended period to secure high draft picks in hopes of building a contender.

Almost an entire decade later, there are no NBA championships or even NBA Finals appearances to show for what they put their fans through on purpose. The 76ers can’t go too low on this list because they’re always one of the league’s better teams. But they can’t go too high because they never deliver. It’s basketball purgatory.

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14. Memphis Grizzlies: Robert Pera

Lance Murphey / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $377 million (2012)

Current team value: $1.65 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: Tech-billionaire Robert Pera played high school basketball until a heart condition ended his career — but he bounced back by purchasing an NBA team before he was 40 years old.

The Grizzlies won more playoff games in Pera’s first two seasons as an owner than in the previous 17 seasons combined but now find themselves in crisis thanks to one player: All-Star point guard Ja Morant. Morant’s monthlong suspension in the 2022-23 season for displaying a gun on Instagram Live derailed a season in which the Grizzlies were on the way to becoming possibly the top team in the Western Conference. Morant’s 25-game suspension to start 2023-24 for displaying another gun on Instagram Live could derail the upcoming season before it even begins.

Morant is about to start a five-year, $193 million contract this season. Not that any of this is Pera’s fault, but all of it affects the value of the team.

Check out all the latest Memphis Grizzlies gear.

13. Portland Trail Blazers: Jody Allen

Craig Mitchelldyer / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $70 million (1988)

Current team value: $2.1 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: Jody Allen took control of the Trail Blazers, the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and the MLS franchise Seattle Sounders FC following the death of her older brother and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2018.

Because Jody already had such a guiding hand in her family’s sports acquisitions through the years, the transition was seamless, and you can point to both the Seahawks and Trail Blazers as being two of the best-run teams in pro sports. Playing in one of the NBA’s smaller markets and trying to be a championship contender is no easy task, but the Blazers may now have a generational talent on its roster in point guard Scoot Henderson, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.

Check out all the latest Portland Trail Blazers gear.

12. Denver Nuggets: Ann Walton Kroenke

Jack Dempsey / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $202 million (2000)

Current team value: $1.93 billion

NBA championships as owner: 1 (2023)

Bottom line: The daughter of Wal-Mart co-founder Bud Walton and wife of Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke, Ann Walton Kroenke has an estimated net worth of $9.1 billion, but it’s not totally clear how much involvement she has in running the Denver Nuggets.

When Stan moved the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles in 2016, he had to divest his own stake in the Nuggets to avoid being the primary owner of teams in different markets, passing ownership to family members. When the new valuations for NBA franchises come out before the 2023-24 season, the Nuggets will be one of the more interesting teams to look out for after winning its first NBA championship in 2023.

Check out all the latest Denver Nuggets gear.

11. Oklahoma City Thunder: Clay Bennett

Sue Ogrocki / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $325 million (2006)

Current team value: $1.875 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: No matter what he does as the owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Clay Bennett will always be the man who took the NBA away from Seattle. That’s unfortunate because the more impressive feat has been creating a viable NBA product in Oklahoma City for an extended period of time.

Bennett has been a pretty great owner for the last 15 years. In that time, the Thunder has made the playoffs 10 times, including an NBA Finals appearance in 2012, and produced two NBA MVPs in Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook and drafted another, James Harden, who won after he was traded to the Houston Rockets.

With one of the best young rosters in the NBA, we might see Oklahoma City among the NBA elite sooner than expected.

Check out all the latest Oklahoma City Thunder gear.

10. Cleveland Cavaliers: Dan Gilbert

Jason DeCrow / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $375 million (2005)

Current team value: $2.05 billion

NBA championships as owner: 1 (2016)

Bottom line: When Dan Gilbert purchased the Cleveland Cavaliers for $375 million in 2005, it was a record price for an NBA team, thanks in no small part to its young star in third-year forward LeBron James.

Gilbert’s fortunes over the last 18 years have largely been tied to James, with the two having a massive, comic-sans-filled falling out when he left the team in 2010 to go to the Miami Heat. James sent Gilbert and the Cavs’ fortunes soaring when he returned for four more years from 2014 to 2018 and brought the team an NBA title in 2016.

Gilbert isn’t really well-liked by NBA fans or his fellow owners, but Cleveland’s only pro sports championship in the last 50 years belongs to his team. Only time will tell how much credit he eventually gets.

Check out all the latest Cleveland Cavs gear.

9. Dallas Mavericks: Mark Cuban

Tony Gutierrez / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $280 million (2000)

Current team value: $3.3 billion

NBA championships as owner: 1 (2011)

Bottom line: Your dad and your uncle were beside themselves when 41-year-old, tech-billionaire Mark Cuban paid $280 million for the Dallas Mavericks in 2000 — how could anyone be such an idiot?!

Twenty-three years later, we’re all eating crow as Cuban has delivered an NBA championship to Dallas, become one of the most famous owners in the history of professional sports and watched the value of his team shoot past the $3 billion mark.

Game, set, match: Cuban.

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8. Chicago Bulls: Jerry Reinsdorf

Mark Elias / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $16.2 million (1985)

Current team value: $4.09 billion

NBA championships as owner: 6 (1991-93, 1996-98)

Bottom line: Few investments in professional sports-ownership history have paid off like Jerry Reinsdorf’s decision to buy the Chicago Bulls for $16.2 million in 1985 — six NBA championships and 38 years later, the team is now valued at over $4 billion.

Reinsdorf pulled one of the great sleight-of-hands of all time when it came to the dismantling of the Michael Jordan-era Bulls following the 1997-98 season. History largely blames Bulls general manager Jerry Krause for the breakup, but nothing could have been done without Reinsdorf’s say. One thing the Bulls can’t avoid? The very best free agents have stayed away from this franchise like the plague since Jordan left. Nobody wants to try and fill those shoes.

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7. San Antonio Spurs: Peter J. Holt

San Antonio Spurs managing partner Peter J. Holt

Nam Y. Huh / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $76 million (1993)

Current team value: $2 billion

NBA championships as owner: 5 (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2014)

Bottom line: Vietnam War veteran Peter M. Holt returned to his home state of Texas and made a fortune with his Caterpillar dealership, eventually leading a group of investors that bought the San Antonio Spurs from Red McCombs in 1993.

Under Holt’s ownership, the Spurs won five NBA championships, but since his son, Peter J. Holt, took over the team in 2016, it’s been a different trajectory. Now, the Spurs appear to have the brightest future of maybe any team in the NBA after selecting 7-foot-4 French center Victor Wembanyama at No. 1 overall in the 2023 NBA Draft. After all, it’s a great city to play in and a great team to play for historically.

Check out all the latest San Antonio Spurs gear.

6. Milwaukee Bucks: Wes Edens

Morry Gash / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $550 million (2014)

Current team value: $2.1 billion

NBA championships as owner: 1 (2021)

Bottom line: The Milwaukee Bucks have seen their value more than double in the last five years with the ascension of power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo becoming a two-time NBA MVP and leading the Bucks to its first NBA championship in 50 years.

All of this has happened with Wes Edens as the team’s owner. The Montana native and Oregon State graduate now has his sights set on bringing Major League Baseball to Las Vegas, with the team name “Las Vegas Villains” already trademarked.

Check out all the latest Milwaukee Bucks gear.

5. Miami Heat: Micky Arison

J Pat Carter / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $68 million (1995)

Current team value: $3 billion

NBA championships as owner: 3 (2006, 2012, 2013)

Bottom line: Micky Arison was born into wealth as one of the children of Carnival Corporation co-founder Ted Arison. Mickey served as the cruise company’s CEO from 1979 until 2013 and purchased the Miami Heat in 1995 for $68 million, which ended up being an absolute steal.

Arison’s genius as an owner can be summed up in two hires: Pat Riley as team president/head coach in 1995 and Erik Spoelstra as head coach in 2007. Riley led the Heat to an NBA title in 2006, and Spoelstra, his assistant, was hand-picked as his successor the next year. Under Spoelstra, the team has won two more NBA championships and played in the NBA Finals two more times — effectively creating the approach known as “Heat Culture” (however you want to interpret that).

It’s actually surprising that the Heat is valued at $3 billion. My guess is that if they actually went on the market, it would be closer to the $4 billion it cost for Mat Ishbia to buy the Phoenix Suns in 2022.

Check out all the latest Miami Heat gear.

4. Boston Celtics: Wyc Grousbeck

Charles Krupa / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $360 million (2002)

Current team value: $3.92 billion

NBA championships as owner: 1 (2008)

Bottom line: Boston Celtics fans — Boston fans, in general — are notorious complainers. No matter how good things get. But our advice to them is to take a second every now and then and thank their lucky stars for the last 21 years under owner Wyc Grousbeck. Since Grousbeck bought the franchise in 2002, the Celtics have played in the NBA Finals three times, Eastern Conference Finals eight times and won an NBA championship in 2008.

The value of the franchise continues to go up, and the team has one of the NBA’s brightest young stars in forward Jayson Tatum. That won’t stop the complaining, but it’s the Celtics … the only expectation is to win an NBA title.

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3. Los Angeles Lakers: Jeanie Buss

Richard Shotwell / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $67.5 million (1979 as part of a package deal)

Current team value: $6.44 billion

NBA championships as owner: 11 (1980, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988, 2000-02, 2009, 2010, 2020)

Bottom line: When Dr. Jerry Buss bought the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979, the team was part of a package deal worth $67.5 million that included the Los Angeles Kings, Great Western Forum and a 13,000-acre California ranch.

Over the last 44 years, the value of the Lakers has increased to approximately $6.5 billion because the team continues to win NBA championships — 11 in total since Buss purchased the team. Since Buss’ daughter, Jeanie Buss, took over day-to-day operations in 2014, the team has seen its greatest increase in value and finds itself as a championship contender once again headed into the 2023-24 season.

Don’t get it twisted — even with the Golden State Warriors taking over as the most valuable NBA franchise, this is still the NBA’s marquee team.

Check out all the latest Los Angeles Lakers gear.

2. Golden State Warriors: Joe Lacob and Peter Guber

Ben Margot / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $450 million (2010)

Current team value: $7 billion

NBA championships as owner: 4 (2015, 2017-18, 2022)

Bottom line: For the first time in 20 years, a team other than the Los Angeles Lakers or New York Knicks was atop the Forbes annual list of NBA franchise valuations in 2022 when the Golden State Warriors checked in at a staggering $7 billion.

If any one person could take credit for that skyrocketing value, it’s owner Joe Lacob, who led an investment group that purchased the team for $450 million in 2010. Remember that it was Lacob who fired head coach Mark Jackson before the 2014-15 season and hired Steve Kerr — the Warriors won the NBA title that year and have won three more since. It was also Lacob who moved the team from Oakland to San Francisco.

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1. Los Angeles Clippers: Steve Ballmer

Los Angeles Clippers Chairman Steve Ballmer

Damian Dovarganes / AP Photo

Purchase price (year): $2 billion (2014)

Current team value: $3.9 billion

NBA championships as owner: None

Bottom line: It was a massive relief to the NBA and its fans when Microsoft billionaire Steve Ballmer agreed to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014 from Donald Sterling, arguably the worst owner in professional basketball history involved in one of the league’s worst scandals.

Looking back, it’s clear that Ballmer may have overpaid for the franchise, but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to drop boatloads of cash to try and win an NBA title. He also built the team a new arena — the Intuit Dome — that they will move into in 2024 and cost a reported $2 billion. In the end, does overpaying really matter to someone worth over $100 billion?

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