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When news broke in March that Wyc Grousbeck was selling the Celtics to Bill Chisholm and a group of private-equity investors for $6.1 billion, Grousbeck’s stated plan was to remain as governor of the team until 2028.
Not so fast.
Grousbeck will not stay on as lead team governor once the agreement is completed, ESPN reported Tuesday. The two sides originally said he would stay through the 2027–28 season in the March press release announcing the deal. Chisholm will assume the role of team governor years earlier than initially planned.
Grousbeck will remain as the team’s alternate governor and CEO through the 2027–28 season, two sources familiar with the matter tell Front Office Sports. Alternate governors vote on league matters when the primary governor is absent.
The news comes as the transaction is expected to close imminently; sources recently told FOS the NBA’s board of governors is expected to vote on the deal by the end of next week.
The agreement—which set a record for the largest pro sports franchise sale in history that was quickly broken by the sale of the Lakers to Mark Walter at a $10 billion valuation in June—has taken longer to obtain board approval than some other recent franchise sales. The sales of the Mavericks, Hornets, and Suns took an average of less than a month and a half to close after being announced. It’s been about five months since the Celtics deal was first announced.
The shift in the succession plan raises the question of how Jeanie Buss’s plan to remain governor of the Lakers for years after selling the team to Walter will play out.
The drawn-out Celtics and Lakers transitions were the latest in a slew of recent examples of unusual NBA team sales and succession plans.
When Mark Cuban sold a majority of the Mavericks to Miriam Adelson in 2023, he initially said he planned to keep running basketball operations even once he was no longer the majority owner. But it became apparent by February that was not the case when the team traded Luka Dončić, and Cuban told FOS he did not know about the trade before it happened. In March, he also wrote in a (now-deleted) Facebook comment, “I fully expected to run basketball. The NBA wouldn’t let me put it in the contract. They took it out. I thought they would stick to their word because they didn’t know the first thing about running a team. Someone obviously changed their mind.”
Meanwhile, the $1.5 billion sale of the Timberwolves to Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore finally closed in June when the NBA’s board of governors unanimously approved the transfer of power, ending a saga that had dragged on for four years.
Representatives for the Celtics and Chisholm declined to comment. The NBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
