Poll: new owner preference

[Sibelius Hindemith]

Not sure what you have against him. Guy with local ties and who has a massive net worth. Lord Balimer is the obvious choice.

[D-train]

Not sure what you have against him. Guy with local ties and who has a massive net worth. Lord Balimer is the obvious choice.

I feel like I have explained this 57 times but will do it again just for you. I will never forgive him for not buying the Sonics from Schultz for a measly $350M and then spending 6X that ($2B) for the Clippers after abandoning Hansen ostensibly ending his bid to bring a team here. And why did he? Because he was busy running MSFT into the ground. The graph below shows the stock price during his pathetic reign as CEO from 2000-2014 followed by the stock sky rocketing after he left.

And why do you care how rich an owner is given there is a salary Cap in the NFL?? As long as they are approved to buy the team they are able easily afford to max out the cap.

Screenshot 2026-05-12 103951.png (52.98 KiB) Viewed 13 times

[Sibelius Hindemith]

He was kind of a mixed bag as CEO...

Since Bill Gates' retirement, Ballmer oversaw a "dramatic shift away from the company's PC-first heritage", replacing most major division heads in order to break down the "talent-hoarding fiefdoms"; in 2012, this led Businessweek to say that the company "arguably [had] the best product lineup in its history". Ballmer drove Microsoft's "connected computing" strategy with acquisitions such as Skype.[36]

Under Ballmer's tenure as CEO, Microsoft's share price stagnated[40] even as the company's annual revenue surged from $25 billion to $70 billion, while its net income increased 215% to $23 billion, and its gross profit of 75 cents on every dollar in sales was double that of Google or IBM.[41] With the company's total annual profit growth of 16.4%, Ballmer's tenure at Microsoft surpassed the performances of other well-known CEOs such as General Electric's Jack Welch (11.2%) and IBM's Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (2%).[36] These gains came from the existing Windows and Office franchises, with Ballmer maintaining their profitability, fending off threats from competitors such as Linux and other open-source operating systems and Google Docs.[42] Ballmer also built half a dozen new businesses,[41] such as the data centers division and the Xbox entertainment and devices division ($8.9 billion),[43][37] and oversaw the acquisition of Skype. Ballmer also constructed the company's $20 billion Enterprise Business, consisting of new products and services such as Exchange, Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint, System Center, and Dynamics CRM, each of which initially faced an uphill battle for acceptance but have emerged as leading or dominant in each category.[37] This diversified product mix helped to offset the company's reliance on PCs and mobile computing devices as the company entered the post-PC era;

.......

Ballmer attracted criticism for failing to capitalize on several new consumer technologies, forcing Microsoft to play catch-up in the areas of tablet computing, smartphones and music players with mixed results.[36][41] According to The Wall Street Journal, under Ballmer's watch, "In many cases, Microsoft latched onto technologies like smartphones, touchscreens, 'smart' cars and wristwatches that read sports scores aloud long before Apple or Google did. But it repeatedly killed promising projects if they threatened its cash cows [Windows and Office]."[41] Ballmer was even named one of the worst CEOs of 2013 by the BBC.[45] As a result of these many criticisms, in May 2012, hedge fund manager David Einhorn called on Ballmer to step down as CEO of Microsoft. "His continued presence is the biggest overhang on Microsoft's stock," Einhorn said in reference to Ballmer.[46] In a May 2012 column in Forbes magazine, Adam Hartung described Ballmer as "the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company", saying he had "steered Microsoft out of some of the fastest growing and most lucrative tech markets (mobile music, headsets and tablets)".

Regarding his efforts to keep the Sonics in Seattle and his ownership of the Clippers...

On March 6, 2008, Seattle mayor Greg Nickels announced that a local ownership group involving Ballmer made a "game-changing" commitment to invest $150 million in cash toward a proposed $300 million renovation of KeyArena and were ready to purchase the Seattle SuperSonics from the Professional Basketball Club LLC in order to keep the team in Seattle. However, this initiative failed, and the SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where they now play as the Oklahoma City Thunder.[100]

In June 2012, Ballmer was an investor in Chris R. Hansen's proposal to build a new arena in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle and bring the SuperSonics back to Seattle.[101] On January 9, 2013, Ballmer and Hansen led a group of investors in an attempt to purchase the Sacramento Kings from the Maloof family and relocate them to Seattle for an estimated $650 million. However, this attempt also fell through.[102]

Following the Donald Sterling scandal in May 2014, Ballmer was the highest bidder in an attempt to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers for a reported price of $2 billion, which was then the second-highest bid for a sports franchise in North American sports history (after the $2.15 billion sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012). After a California court confirmed the authority of Shelly Sterling to sell the team, it was announced on August 12, 2014, that Ballmer would become the Los Angeles Clippers owner.[103]

In March 2020, Ballmer agreed to buy The Forum in Inglewood, California.[104] The purchase would allow him to build Intuit Dome in the nearby area since plans for a new Clippers' arena were opposed by the former owners of The Forum.[104]

In a survey conducted by The Athletic in December 2020, Ballmer was voted the best owner in basketball.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer