NBA Approves Michael Jordan's Bid To Buy Bobcats For $275 Million

The NBA Board of Directors unanimously approved Michael Jordan's bid to buy the Bobcats today, according to the Associated Press.

Commissioner David Stern said in a statement that he was pleased the sale was "closed in such a smooth and expeditious fashion."

Jordan, who is expected to look for minority partners, reportedly bought the team for $275 million, though he is also taking on more than $150 million dollars in debt.

Forbes had reported that the sale was for just $175 million, a figure the NBA disputed. 

Michael Jordan should be approved as the new owner of the Charlotte Bobcats by the end of next week, according to NBA comissioner David Stern.

Stern said Friday that he expect’s the league’s board of governors to approve Jordan as the league’s first player-turned-owner in a vote expected to take place next week.

The league has already approved His Airness for ownership of the Bobcats, which he purchased for a reported $275 million from former owner Bob Johnson.

“He considers himself a North Carolina native and he’s quite anxious to make this team into an important part of the community,” Stern said. “I think he has the capacity and the will to do that. I think he’s the right majority owner at the right time.”

“I think it’s fair to say he can afford it,” the comissioner added.

While Michael Ozanian of Forbes.com wrote the Bobcats were sold for just $175 million, the NBA continues to contend that the sale was for much more money.

The NBA told Tom Ziller of Fanhouse that the figure is closer to $275-$290 million, not the $175 million sum Ozanian reported.

The league told Sports Business Daily earlier this week that the sale values the franchise at $275-290 million, which is far closer to what Johnson initially paid. (The league confirmed this figure to FanHouse Thursday.)

Ozanian insisted in the comments section of his article that the NBA’s figure does not take the franchise’s debt into account, but as Ziller notes, Ozanian is the same person that recklessly wrote that the NBA was “full of thugs” in the very early stages of the Gilbert Arenas-Javaris Crittenton gun scandal. In other words, one could say Ozanian tends to go for shock value (as evidenced by his headline that the sale was “embarrassing” to the NBA).

As NBA owners and players gear up for what figures to be an acrimonious and potentially protracted labor negotiation in 2011, signs of the league’s dire financial straits continue to mount. The latest sign: Michael Jordan was reportedly able to buy a controlling stake in the Charlotte Bobcats with the franchise valued at a mere $175 million, according to Michael Ozanian of Forbes.com.

That $175 million valuation represents nearly a 42% decline in value from the $300 million former owner Bob Johnson paid for the team just seven years ago. With rumors that half to two-thirds of NBA teams are losing money in 2010 and franchise values likely continuing to plummet, don’t be surprised if the owners draw a very hard line in the sand and force a work stoppage in 2011 to try to push down salaries and control costs. The NBA: where amazingly depressing happens.

(H/T The Baseline)