The 2023 NBA Draft Lottery took place last night, with 13 teams getting the Top-14 picks for the 2023 Draft. The team that won the Jackpot was the San Antonio Spurs. Coming into the night with a 14% chance to land the top spot, they did just that. This means on June 22, 2023, the Spurs are most likely picking up Victor Wembanyama. However, this move ended up costing Michael Jordan $280 Million.
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Victor Wembanyama is a once-in-a-lifetime talent. He’s 7ft 4″ tall and has an 8 feet wingspan. Despite Scoot Henderson making a splash in the G League Ignite, no one’s eyes have shifted off Wemby as the top pick. While Victor was off celebrating with his family in France, there was one man whose bank balance was getting affected: Michael Jordan.
How did Victor Wembanyama cost Michael Jordan $280 Million?
In order to figure out the reasoning behind the number, we’ll have to take you all the way to October 2022. On October 7th, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN went to ESPN’s NBA Countdown and talked about Victor Wembanyama. He shared that a team president claimed that drafting Victor Wembanyama might add as much as $500 Million to the value of the franchise.
Now keeping that in mind, let’s look at the Hornets’ franchise value. The Hornets are valued at $1.7 Billion(via Forbes). According to business analyst Darren Rovell, if Victor Wembanyama were to join the Hornets and become the franchise guy, he would have helped their evaluation grow to $2.1 Billion. This is a $400 Million jump from what the Hornets are currently worth.
Considering Michael Jordan is looking to sell his stake in the Hornets(he owns 70% of the team), an additional $400 Million for the team would have resulted in an additional $280 Million(70% of 400 Million) for MJ.
This would have helped Jordan add $1.47 Billion to his net worth on the sale(pre-tax), instead of the projected $1.19 Billion currently.
Who will the Hornets draft as the 2nd pick?
The top two projected picks this year are Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson. Since DraftKings and, well, anyone with eyes project that Spurs will definitely scoop up Wemby, that leaves Scoot and the other picks for the Hornets.
Scoot is a point guard, which is something that might bother the Hornets, considering they already have a lottery point guard in LaMelo Ball. Currently, they’re projected to pick up Brandon Miller instead of Scoot.
The Hornets might surprise us by picking Scoot and packaging him for some other star, or maybe run a two-PG offense.
