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).