Will “Motley Crew” Band of Financiers Drive Celts to Banner 17?

I love hoops. Bill Aulet of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, no slouch himself on the hardwood, calls me “Danger.” I like to think it’s because whenever I go up for the J, the other team is in danger—due to my dead-eye shooting. But some say, especially these days, it’s simply dangerous for other players when I take the court…

Whatever. In any case, my passion for basketball has me chomping at the bit as the NBA finals begin tonight—pitting the mighty Boston Celtics against Kobe, et al. And, also thanks to my love for hoops, I was delighted—and kicked myself for not writing the story myself—when I saw last weekend’s Wall Street Journal article about Banner 17, the band of 25-odd financiers who own the C’s and have the goal of taking the team to its 17th NBA championship, and what would be its first in 22 years. Yes, it has been that long since Larry Bird (and current Celtics general manager Danny Ainge) led the Celts to the 1985-86 title.

The article (in case you spent last weekend not reading the Journal), all too briefly follows the story of Wyc Grousbeck, CEO of the Celtics and a venture partner at Highland Capital Partners in Lexington, MA, Stephen Pagliuca, managing director of Bain Capital Private Equity, and others. Both Grousbeck and Pagliuca, by the way, made Xconomy’s VC Varsity roster as top athletes in the local venture and private equity scene: Grousbeck made the second team, Pagliuca was an honorable mention, along with fellow Bain managing director Joshua Bekenstein.

But back to Banner 17. The Celtics owners, says the WSJ piece, ponied up an average of $10 million apiece for the privilege of front-row seats (worth $1,400 each) and other perks of ownership (the Journal says Pagliuca, Grousbeck, and Grousbeck’s father, Irving, bought the team for $360 million in 2002 and have since selectively sold off slices to key investors). The article quotes New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft as calling Banner 17 “the most amazing ownership group I’ve ever seen.”

But I especially liked this paragraph: “They are a motley bunch, sometimes competing directly against one another for deals. Each has varying opinions on what their stake represents. A number view themselves as trustees of a Boston institution. Others admit that as an investment, the Celtics wouldn’t stand up to their own firms’ investing criteria.”

I bet that will change, especially if the team brings home that 17th banner. Go Celts!

Author: Robert Buderi

Bob is Xconomy's founder and chairman. He is one of the country's foremost journalists covering business and technology. As a noted author and magazine editor, he is a sought-after commentator on innovation and global competitiveness. Before taking his most recent position as a research fellow in MIT's Center for International Studies, Bob served as Editor in Chief of MIT's Technology Review, then a 10-times-a-year publication with a circulation of 315,000. Bob led the magazine to numerous editorial and design awards and oversaw its expansion into three foreign editions, electronic newsletters, and highly successful conferences. As BusinessWeek's technology editor, he shared in the 1992 National Magazine Award for The Quality Imperative. Bob is the author of four books about technology and innovation. Naval Innovation for the 21st Century (2013) is a post-Cold War account of the Office of Naval Research. Guanxi (2006) focuses on Microsoft's Beijing research lab as a metaphor for global competitiveness. Engines of Tomorrow (2000) describes the evolution of corporate research. The Invention That Changed the World (1996) covered a secret lab at MIT during WWII. Bob served on the Council on Competitiveness-sponsored National Innovation Initiative and is an advisor to the Draper Prize Nominating Committee. He has been a regular guest of CNBC's Strategy Session and has spoken about innovation at many venues, including the Business Council, Amazon, eBay, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.