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Tim Kawakami, a regular pot-stirrer for the San Jose Mercury News, has been reporting since the summer that much-maligned Warriors owner Chris Cohan has been working to sell the team that has been, for the most part, a failure since he took over in 1995. (Golden State has made the playoffs once in that 15-year span.) Kawakami, without naming sources, made Bay Area hearts burst by tossing out the name of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison -- the fourth richest man in the world, according to Forbes -- as a potential buyer.Talk has died down since the summer ... until Wednesday, that is, when during a public event at Oracle's South Bay headquarters Ellison took a question about his interest in the Warriors. Ellison confirmed to the audience that he has been trying to buy the team from Cohan, according to MarketWatch's John Letzing.
Kawakami repeats an old refrain in explaining why it hasn't happened: Cohan thinks too highly of the team's value. Kawakami reports Cohan wants a valuation of $400 million on the team; Cohan owns 80 percent of the club, so that'd put him in line to make $320 million off the sale. He bought the team in full in '95 for about $120 million; he sold 20 percent to local investors in 2005.
If Ellison somehow does get his hands on the Warriors, it'd mark a new high point for NBA ownership in terms of wealth. You think new Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov is wealthy? Well, you're right, he is. Prokhorov is worth $9 billion. But Ellison, he boasts a net worth of ... $22 billion. Ellison has the net worth of Prokhorov and Blazers owner Paul Allen put together. And he's not exactly known as a spendthrift outside the board room. I mean, he has a yacht worth nearly as much as the Warriors! (A yacht with a basketball court on the deck, of course.)
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