Three Steps to Becoming a Beloved Celtics Owner
As you probably saw, this week the Boston Celtics announced that they had been sold to Bill Chisholm and his team for $6.1 billion, the most for any North American sports franchise. And it's hard to argue that it should have been otherwise. If/when the Yankees or Cowboys or Dodgers go up for sale, OK, they should fetch more, but that's about it. The sale came with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I felt bad for Steve Pagliuca, who clearly wanted the team, and would have brought the most continuity. On the other hand, the new owner is a local guy. One of the finalists was from Philadelphia, and owned part of the Phillies. I would have been apoplectic if the team had been sold to that guy. The other finalist has quickly moved on to a bid for an NHL expansion team. He just wanted the C's in his portfolio, and that is a major bullet dodged. They also didn't sell the team to a Bezos, which is the most major bullet dodge possible. In the end, selling to Chisholm seems like a good outcome, but only time will tell.
In that spirit, I have three pieces of advice for the new owner. Well, I mean, I'm sure I'd have dozens, perhaps hundreds of pieces of advice, but I narrowed it down to the three most important pieces of advice for today. Three pieces of advice – three steps, if you will – to becoming a beloved Celtics owner.
Step One: Publicly Promise Not to Trade Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Ever.
Right now, we are getting to witness greatness every single time Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown take the court. We are watching two of the best players to ever play professional basketball. Jayson Tatum is on the precipice of becoming just the 43rd player in NBA history to make the All-NBA First Team four or more times. If you count the ABA, 45th player. Only 48 players in NBA history have scored more points in the playoffs than Jaylen Brown. This is greatness, and Celtics fans deserve to watch them play for their entire careers, even when they are old and past their primes.
One of the underrated ways we bridge generations of fandom is through the latter years of a fantastic player. Some of my personal favorite memories of Larry Bird are his battles with Chuck Person and the Pacers:
And the throwback 2 OT game vs. the Blazers:
I was too young to really understand his glory years. When the C's won the 1986 NBA Finals, I was seven. I was aware of it, but wasn't really old enough to process it correctly. But because I can connect to Bird through these later games, I can more easily picture how great he was in his prime. The next generation of young fans deserves that with JT and JB. We know that eventually the team will make personnel moves we disagree with, even if Brad Stevens stays (please stay, Brad Stevens). But just make us this one promise. Promise us that we get that elusive thing, to see these generational players play for only our team, that they will be Celtics for life, and we'll be off to a great start.
Step Two: Buy the Garden from Jeremy Jacobs
There has been a lot of talk about the new owners' building a new arena down by Boston Medical Center and the Gillette headquarters. Nobody wants this. The Seaport has been floated as well. I promise you, nobody wants this. It's a gigantic pain to get to either place, and you can only do so efficiently by car, and "efficient" is not how I would describe the process of getting there even in a car. The BMC/Gillette spot is a literal train yard under an overpass. The Kraft's nearly built a stadium for the Revs there, before realizing it was a very bad idea. The Seaport has been theoretically thriving for awhile, and yet it has no feel. People I know who work in the Seaport tell me it immediately clears out after five, six PM. And if you leave the one little strip, you're surrounded by industrial areas. Go one way, it's the docks. Go the other, it's the convention center and the US Post Office vehicle graveyard. In other words, depressing. No one wants to drive near there, and building good public transit there would cost a fortune that the city doesn't have.
Even if you built an arena in one of those places – or even out in Brighton where the train yard there is to be decommissioned – you absolutely can not manufacture the energy and the vibes of the Causeway area around the Garden. People have been going there for nearly 100 years to Bruins and Celtics games. That neighborhood means something, and it is also very easy to get to. It is at the confluence of highways and of trains. Not just the T, but also the Commuter Rail. It's a sustainable area in a way that no other area in the city is, not even the Fenway area. The Fenway and Kenmore stops are close to Fenway Park, but North Station is at the Garden. It is right there. You simply can not replicate that, and any new venue is going to be a dramatic step down. It would be a bummer, and you just will not be able to create a better fan experience anywhere else.
But if they could buy the Garden from Jacobs, then problem solved. They get the building revenue, and the building can be upgraded from within. Obviously, everyone knows the great work that Janet Marie Smith and her team did upgrading Fenway Park, giving it a more modern feel. That can be done to the TD Garden as well.
The Garden opened in 1995, the same year as Coors Field. There are parallels. Coors Field is now the third-oldest ballpark in the National League, with only Wrigley Field and Dodger Stadium being older. The Garden is now one of the 10 oldest arenas in the NBA. I used to work at Coors Field for the Colorado Rockies, and I just went back last month for the first time in 15 years. It's amazing how they have upgraded the ballpark with new suites and fan areas designed to maximize revenue. They tore chunks of the stadium apart to rebuild something better, without interrupting the game on the field. The same can surely be done to the Garden.
I definitely get that $6.1 billion is a lot of money, and that Jacobs would likely hold the new ownership group over a barrel if they tried to buy the Garden from him for all the reasons I just mentioned. Nevertheless, it'll be worth it. Getting control of the building and being more creative with how it's used, how it's managed, would be crucial for Chisholm and his crew. But more importantly, I and – I believe other fans, and just everyone in Boston, in this region – would also consider it a public good to remove control of that building from Jacobs.
First off, Jacobs doesn't live here, isn't from here, doesn't care about here. Never has, never will. Second, he's cheap as hell. He has proven this over and over through his stewardship of the Bruins, but he sank to a new low in the early stages of the COVID lockdown, when he had to be guilted into paying his employees. It was despicable behavior, and yet completely expected. I stopped following the Bruins decades ago – the last Bruins game I attended was Ray Bourque Night – because the Bruins under him will only win in spite of him, not because of him. He'll never go all in in his investment of the team, because he's not even a Bruins fan. He's a Sabres fan. He proved that again when he nickel and dimed Brad Marchand, and shipped him off for a pittance.
Getting the Garden back in the hands of someone from here, and showing the team, the city, and the fans that he understands not just Celtics history but Boston history, would be a critical step for Chisholm in winning everyone over. The process should start the second he gets control of the team. Wyc Grousbeck said he will stay on as governor of the franchise for three years. That gives Chisholm three years where he can focus on getting this deal done, and not having to divide his time, because he'll have Grousbeck's steady hands on the wheel. Or at least have Grousbeck there to help him ease into the basketball side of things while he focuses on the business side.
Grousbeck, to his credit, poured cold water on the thought of building a new arena just the other day. But it won't be the case until it's the case. Buy the Garden, Bill.
Step Three: Get a WNBA team to Boston
Once you own the building, bring a women's team! This is a no brainer, the WNBA is really taking off, and the concept of playing women's games here is now proven with the game last year and the feverish (pun intended) demand for this summer's game with the Sun and Fever.
It is frankly ridiculous that the WNBA has ignored Boston for so long, especially when you consider the minor league arena that the Connecticut Sun play in. Its capacity is only 10,000 – basically half of the Garden and its 19,580 capacity – and they don't even fill it most of the time. I went with my friend and our kids to Game 4 of the 2022 WNBA Finals, when they played the Las Vegas Aces. It wasn't a sell out. We bought our tickets for face value from the team the day before the game, and there were empty seats in our section. To say that would never happen in Boston is a dramatic understatement.
It's not just anecdotal evidence. Last season, with Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese taking the WNBA to new heights, the Sun sold out a whopping nine games. In the 11 seasons in Connecticut before that, they sold out zero games. ZERO. In their 21 seasons in Connecticut, they have only had an average attendance higher than the WNBA average attendance four times. Last year, their average attendance ranked just ninth, ahead of only Washington, Dallas, and Atlanta, all of whom were rebuilding (Atlanta snuck into the playoffs at 15-25 but were quickly broomed by the NY Liberty).
We could have a separate discussion about whether Connecticut deserves a WNBA team at all, but the presence of the Sun should not in any way deter Boston from getting a team, and it's frankly ridiculous that I would need to explain that to anybody. Yet somehow, the WNBA is not making overtures to Boston. Three more teams are coming – in San Francisco, Portland, and Toronto.
Ultimately, I believe a lot to most (and possibly all) of the reason is Jeremy Jacobs. I don't think he wants a team in the building, and shut down the possibility a long time ago. All the more reason to buy the Garden from him. It's an embarrassment that Boston doesn't have a team, and Chisholm buying the Garden and then getting Boston a WNBA team will be incredible for the growth of basketball in general, but especially here. Most importantly, it would cement Chisholm as a great owner in this city. Wyc Grousbeck has done a lot of great things in his time here. He brought us Banner 17, Banner 18, and I believe this year the C's are on their way to Banner 19. But he hasn't been able to bring us a WNBA team. That's how Chisholm can distinguish himself.
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A week ago, nobody in the general public knew who Bill Chisholm was, or his company. He may be one of us, and clearly wants to believe that he is. It was right there in the introductory press release, and it was the main talking point during last night's Celtics game in Utah. But he's going to have to prove it, and there's no way for him to do so overnight. That'll only come in three, five, 10 years, as he proves to have avoided the pitfalls that have plagued other new owners. But it can be done. Start with these three steps.