http://66.225.205.104/SG20100301.mp3
The Charlotte Bobcats are getting a new owner. Bob Johnson announced over the weekend that he is selling the team to NBA legend Michael Jordan. The deal is expected to be finalized by the end of March. Rick Bonnell covers the Bobcats for the Charlotte Observer. He spoke with WFAE's Scott Graf about the sale. S: Rick, thanks for tuning in today. We appreciate you being on the show this morning. I'm glad to. S: What changes should we expect, if any? Well, I wouldn't say a whole bunch of dramatic changes. The simplest one though, is that, obviously, for Jordan to make any player personnel moves, at the end of the day, he had to get the blessing of Bob Johnson. Once this transaction occurs, whatever Jordan does is Jordan's business, and it will be interesting in my mind to see sort of the left brain versus the right brain for Jordan. He is, on the one hand, a compulsively competitive person. On the other hand, he is not used to going into businesses that lose money, so what happens when Jordan the guy who is hell-bent on winning a championship has an argument with Jordan, the guy who doesn't necessarily want to spend another couple of million dollars to make his team a little bit better. I think that that would be a very interesting place to be. S: How involved in the daily operations of the team do you expect Jordan to be as owner? Well, I certainly it is more than he has been. I think the problem here to some degree - and I respect his position on this - is that Jordan has always said he is not an employee, he is not the general manager. Well, he also was not the guy who at the end of the day was responsible as an equity partner for the profits or the loss. I think he was in sort of place of limbo there and I think that now that his skin is actually in the game I would certainly hope that he is around a lot more, is a lot more involved with things like pre-draft workouts and this no longer seems like one of those situations where he was doing business on a Blackberry between the fifth green and sixth tee box. S: Rick, we've got about 30 seconds left. Jordan has been criticized a lot for not spending enough time in Charlotte. Do you know if he has intentions to make Charlotte his full-time home now? I don't, but I think that that's kind of a spurious issue. I think people need to understand that - if in my mind, if he's generally concerned about making the product better, I think people should stop spending so much time worrying about what his residence is. S: Real quick, what are players saying about this? It is not of great consequence to them. As a matter of fact, Gerald Wallace made a great joke in practice yesterday. He said, unless the guy is suiting up, it really doesn't change anything about my life. S: Rick Bonnell, the beat writer, covers the Bobcats for the Charlotte Observer. Thank you very much for the time. Your welcome. Bye bye.