The rest is just noise

Chapter 1543: What I love is the West Coast

On August 2, 2003, the Paul Gaston family officially announced that they would sell their shares in the Boston Celtics team.

According to the agreement between Louis and the Gaston family in the summer of 2001, if the Gaston family is ready to sell the team, they need to sell Louis at least 36% of the team's shares to ensure that Louis has absolute control over the Celtics.

Control.

On August 15, the Boston Globe broke the news: "Legend Lu will acquire 60% of the Celtics for US$312 million."

For those who don't care about financial news, they know that Louis is rich, but they didn't expect to be so rich. This deal allows Louis to hold 76% of the shares of the Celtics, and he will become the team's largest shareholder.

In fact, if the Gaston family had not encountered a financial crisis, they might not have chosen to sell the team at this good time. Because since Louis took over the team two years ago, the Celtics' market value has increased every year.

This is a good business that will never lose money.

Later, the Gaston family sold a 20% stake to Washington businessman Robert Johnson for $104 million.

RJ met Louis when he was in New York. Over the years, the two have cooperated a lot in business. This time he also introduced each other to the board of directors. Although he is not in the NBA circle, RJ has cooperated extensively in business and has worked with many people.

NBA bosses all have contacts, so he was accepted without any surprise.

The person who really had problems with moving up the class was Ewing.

Ewing's performance during the labor war made the league and the owners have a bad impression of him.

Therefore, when Ewing decided to spend $52 million to acquire 10% of the Celtics' team shares, his acquisition application was rejected. This made Ewing furious, but he had nothing to do.

If he wants to join the boss's circle, he has to follow their rules.

And this rule is that if people don’t like you, then you can’t get in.,

So Ewing had no choice but to do the next best thing and spent half of his planned money to acquire 4% of the Celtics' shares. This did not require the approval of the league's board of directors.

There is no need to apply for changes in the ownership of shares below 5%, and even if they are given away, others cannot interfere. From a broader perspective, Ewing, who holds this amount of shares, has not entered this circle.

Louis changed from "LegendLu" to "BossLu", and the person most implicated in this incident was Lu Wuxia. From now on, his identity changed from "LegendLu's son" to "Boss's son".

If he plays well, it doesn't matter. If he plays poorly, the criticism from the outside world will be enough to make him doubt his life. After becoming the boss, Louis' focus in life has changed a lot.

His focus had to shift from the team to operations.

Louis discovered that although the Celtics have been on the poor line every year in recent years and have basically paid no taxes, the team's annual income only ranks in the middle and lower reaches of those teams with positive income, lower than the Memphis Grizzlies and

Teams like the Toronto Raptors, which make millions of dollars a year, are better but limited.

It can't be compared to the gold-swallowing giants like the Knicks.

I think back then, James Dolan raised a $300 million luxury tax bill. If this money fell on the Celtics, they could directly declare bankruptcy.

As for the Knicks? They applied for a special exception to pay the money in ten years, but in fact, it only took less than five years to earn back the money. Although the business in Boston is not as developed as in New York, it is by no means

This should be the benefit.

The day before the preseason training camp started, Louis held a meeting with the operations department at the Boston headquarters. Ewing also participated in this meeting.

Ewing is now not only a minority shareholder of the team, but also Chris Wallace's successor and vice president of basketball operations. As for Chris Wallace, he went to Memphis to pursue a higher education.

When Louis said something about the Celtics' unfavorable business development over the years, Ewing couldn't help laughing and said: "Don't talk about commercial value.

, take a look at our halftime performance catalog."

The Celtics are the only team in the NBA without a cheerleader. Louis certainly knows this.

Now that he's on stage, this matter will inevitably become history, and it's useless if the old man disagrees. But when Louis saw the Celtics' halftime performance catalog, he still didn't hold back. He opened his eyes wide in disbelief.

Look at the performance items above.

"Is this fucking real?" Of course Louis knew it was.

Because these programs have been in existence since 1984, his first season as coach.

Nearly 20 years later, they still exist and steadfastly tell the outside world that the Celtics are a team that does not pay attention to entertainment. The Celtics' most grand halftime show invites well-known local musicians to play.

Sing.

But doing this costs money. Although the Celtics don't pay attention to entertainment, they do pay attention to money. So if possible, try not to do such expensive things.

So they found another way to not only show the team's humanistic feelings, but also save money - they would look through the team's history directory to find those famous team players whose birthdays were between October and June of next year, and then try their best to

Invite them to watch the game, even if the person has passed away, the family can also be the representative. When they come to the scene, the on-site DJ directly plays the story and deeds of the famous player, calling on the audience to pay tribute to them.

In this way, they only spent the ticket money to make the event "beautiful".

The most outrageous thing is that the on-site ticket purchase and lottery that has existed since the 1970s is still there.

This is how the ticket lottery works. In the early years, Auerbach came up with an idea in order to generate income for the team. Thousands of lottery tickets were randomly sold on site, and the luckiest winner will receive a prize from John Havlice.

An autographed player card.

The event continues to this day, with ticket prices becoming more and more expensive and prizes becoming more and more expensive. The Larry Bird period was the most popular period of the event.

Because player cards signed by Bird are really valuable.

Now, it just looks like an outdated product.

After the meeting, Louis flew directly to Washington to interview Auerbach about the cheerleading team and various plans to develop the Celtics' commercial value in the future.

To Louis' surprise, Auerbach was not as old-fashioned as he thought. The era of Auerbach's generation is over.

He knew very well that Louis' plan was imperative, and telling him face to face was just to show respect.

"Just do whatever you want. I'm getting old and I don't have the energy to care about these things anymore." Auerbach said playfully, "You seem a lot more anxious after becoming the boss than before."

The old man's words spoke to Louis's heart, didn't they?

Life was so smooth when he wasn't the big boss, but now that he saw the mess that was the Celtics, he wanted to catch Gaston and his son and give them a good fuck.

As NBA owners, they are obviously as poor as dogs, but they are too lazy to develop the commercial value of the team. They just live and die year after year. It is so abominable.

"What are you going to do next? Bring in the cheerleading squad?" Auerbach asked.

"Well, this and other things will have to wait until next season." Louis has no time now, because the new season is about to start. "I plan to ask a network operator to help me manage the upcoming team forum and team

Exclusive website."

Auerbach's eyes widened when he heard this: "What forum? Do you want to change arenas? The Fleet Center is pretty good, right? What kind of website is there? Is it a computer?"

"I knew you didn't understand." Louis laughed. "Don't understand? Isn't it just about computers?"

"That's right, that's what happens on the Internet."

Louis is too lazy to talk about the Internet with an old man left behind by the times.

Louis has been planning this since the Gaston family decided to sell the team.

First, it is a fan forum with the Celtics as the core, and then gradually expands it to all NBA teams, attracting fans of each team to play.

As far as Louie knows, no team currently has its own network

Forums, if run well, are of immeasurable value.

The second is the team's exclusive website, which can display the Celtics' historical honors, provide game schedules, team news and online ticket sales services.

The Celtics' commercial failure has rekindled Louis' enthusiasm for work, because if he runs the team carefully, he will be the one losing money year after year.

This is the disadvantage of being a boss. As president, he only needs to ensure the operation of the team and team departments, but being a boss needs to think about making money all day long. Although he can afford to lose money, losing money means that he is a failure.

The boss, how can Boss Lu endure this?

Affected by these things, the team is the least of Louis' concerns now.

At this time, the Celtics' preseason training camp had already begun for a week, and Louis didn't even ask Bird.

He didn't even know that the training camp had already started, because he was rushing to send a blessing to the marketing team - he asked the team to come up with a new slogan that fit the Celtics' temperament within three days.

"Boss, our Celtics have always been a pragmatic team...isn't the slogan too Lakers?" "Fuck pragmatism!" Louis said angrily, "This is the taste of the West Coast, all I want is

Give me something to think about!"

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