This had been in the works for a while.
Michael Jordan’s decision to sell a majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets, which became official on Thursday when the franchise announced the transaction was complete, didn’t just happen overnight. This wasn’t something that cropped up within the past few months.
Instead, Jordan’s agreement to offer up the Hornets’ controlling reins to a new ownership group spearheaded by Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin stems from a conversation the Hall of Famer initiated last summer.
“The way he has dealt with us in this process — he told us a year ago, ‘You two guys are the right guys to buy the business,’ ” Schnall told The Observer on Thursday.