ABA team owner credited with drafting ‘the best deal ever done’
Ozzie Silna, who turned a fading American Basketball Association franchise into a four-decade windfall of nearly $800 million from the NBA in what’s commonly called the greatest deal in sports history, has died at age 83.
Silna’s younger brother and Spirits of St. Louis coowner Daniel Silna told The Associated Press that his brother diedTuesday at aLos Angeles hospital after a brief illness.
Banking on an eventual ABA-NBA merger, they bought the failing Carolina Cougars of the ABA in 1974 for about $1 million and promptly moved the team to St. Louis, then the biggest American city without a pro basketball team.
After the 1975-76 season, the NBA agreed to a merger, accepting four of the six teams into the league. Silna negotiated to receive four-sevenths of a share of theNBA’s annual TV revenue for as long as theNBAwas around.
At the time, itwasworth about $300,000 a year. But as theNBAandits popularity grew, the annual checks grew into the tens of millions.
By 2014, the brothers had netted nearly $300 million from the deal. By that time, the NBA was challenging the arrangement in court.
That year, the brothers settled with the league in a deal that paid them $500 million and amuch smaller stream of money, according to theNewYork Times.
BornUziel Silna inIsrael in 1932, he moved to New Jersey when he was 7. He madehismoneyin his family’s textile business before buying the Spirits.
In later years, he lived in Malibu, California, where he was a tenacious fighter for environmental causes.
Silna downplayed the brilliance of the dealheand attorney Donald Schupak drew up. The basis for it came months earlier when only seven teams were left standing in the ABA.
League owners figured six teamswould be allowed in theNBA, and onewould be left out. Silna wanted to be equitable to the owner whowas excluded.
“That’s howwe came up with the one-seventh” figure, he told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. “I thought that seventh team deserved the same benefit as the other six.”
But the Squires folded. One-seventh times four — four teams were admitted to the NBA — equals foursevenths, which is the cut the Silnas got each year.
“Some people say it’s the best deal ever done,” Silna said. “I just looked at it as a way of being fair.”