WHEN ISHBIA SPEAKS IN PHOENIX, CHICAGO NEWSPAPERS SAY NOTHING ABOUT SOX
Those who follow ownership groups must be blown away by the Reinsdorf-Ishbia story, where one owner is notoriously cheap and the other owners are nutso NBA spenders — yet, try reading about it
The problem with Chicago media, along with a lack of accountability and verve, is an inability to perform a math assignment. Jerry Reinsdorf is 89 years old. He’s incapable of running sports teams at his age and will continue to wreck the White Sox and Bulls in his 90s. When the famous Ishbias purchased 35 percent of the baseball team — a significant deal — it required a serious examination by the city’s two newspapers this week.
The Sun-Times? Not a mention.
The Tribune? Not a mention.
Does Reinsdorf still run those operations, too? Am I calling his office when I write Chris De Luca, sports editor of the Sun-Times, and ask him to please cover the damned story? He hasn’t, which makes me wonder why he didn’t take a buyout last month.
How will two owners of the Phoenix Suns, who just spent NBA highs of $214 million in salaries and $152 million in luxury-tax payments, get along with Reinsdorf and two sons who collectively own 50 percent of the Sox? It’s an outlandish ownership clash of a cheap family and crazy brothers worth $15.5 billion. I don’t care if Jerry still runs both teams. When he does not, Justin Ishbia will be front and center and might want to spend $800 million on the next super free-agent. Reinsdorf was the one scolded by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred for saying he wasn’t interested in Shohei Ohtani.
This relationship cannot work. ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith describes Mat Ishbia thusly: “On the verge of being recognized as the (NBA’s) worst owner ever.” But at least he went wild with finances, unlike Jerry, who does not spend and rarely has in the 21st century. Some might say they’re the worst two sets of owners in sports. Hey, one wants to win and is trying. The other does not want to win. I will take the one who cares, every time.
The story was broken last week by Michael Ozanian, who compiles annual ownership valuations for CNBC and listed Justin and Mat Ishbia as co-Sox owners. I followed with columns. So did 670 The Score — a Chicago radio station known for firing Dan Bernstein — which provided ownership percentages early this week. A newspaper in suburban Chicago, the Daily Herald, wrote a story but claimed in mid-week that any “suggestion that a new dawn is coming … seems so palpably cruel.”
Cruel? Again, Reinsdorf is almost 90, in a profession of wild-spending owners such as Mark Walter, who has turned the Dodgers into a financial machine when he’s still based on West Monroe Street … in Chicago. Have the media folks given up, too, like the teams? Reinsdorf never has spent more than $75 million on a baseball free agent. His basketball team is stuck in idle. His TV network can be found on UHF with an old-school antenna.
He is the one to blame.
And the media who don’t call him out — blame them, too. People ask why I handed back $1 million at the Sun-Times and wanted no part of the schlock. Now you know.
Mat Ishbia conducted a press conference Thursday after firing his third coach in two years, Mike Budenholzer, who will be paid $10 million a year into 2029. At least the owner showed up and took questions. That’s more than Reinsdorf does.
“Embarrassing season, right? Disappointing. Awful,” Ishbia said. “I watch every game like all you guys do and no one’s proud of it, no one’s happy with it, from me, to the front office, to the coaches and players, to the marketing executives to the security guards. It was a failure.
“I want to put a team out there on the court that everyone is proud of. It has to have an identity — an identity similar to Phoenix. Some grit, some determination, some work ethic, some grind, some joy. We just haven’t had that.”
He has been around since 2023. He is 45 and walked on at Michigan State, where Tom Izzo’s team won the 2000 national championship. “I’m no talent, all heart, that’s my life,” Ishbia said. “I will just outwork everyone. I’m going to have a coach, a front office and players that the Phoenix community will love.”
It’s too early to call him a failure. He spent $214 million, you know. Kevin Durant will be traded after he ended the careers of more coaches, but Devin Booker remains as the centerpiece. Ishbia spent $4 billion for the Suns and the WNBA’s Mercury. Give him time, which is what I’d say about Justin and Mat in Chicago. Plus, Ishbia took huge shots at Stephen A., who actually compared Ishbia to Donald Sterling. Wait, Sterling was banned as Los Angeles Clippers owner when his racist comments were made public. My gosh. Smith is fibbing again.
“Stephen A. Smith, I don’t take much of what he says seriously,” Ishbia said. “I don’t think many people do to be honest with you. The things he said about Kevin Durant, just wrong and disrespectful. The things he said about LeBron (James) were just disrespectful and inappropriate. He’s doing his thing, he’s on the mic and I think he’ll apologize to me because I think it’s disrespectful to (have) my name aligned with anybody that was kicked out of the league or no longer part of it.”
Correct.
“If he wants to say the first 2 1/2 years Mat Ishbia bought the team, we didn’t win a championship, you could probably say that about almost every owner ever, but yeah, we had high expectations, but we didn’t win,” Ishbia said. “We spent a lot of money and we didn’t win. Yep. Yep. Be critical of me on that, but to even say that kind of stuff, I think he’ll apologize. I think he was out of line and I think he knows that. I don’t think he really believes that.”
What I love about Ishbia is that he showed up and spoke.
What I loathe about Reinsdorf is that he rarely speaks.
When those two men are joined by Justin Ishbia in a room, well, I might like the future of the White Sox in America’s third-largest market — especially if they dump Jerry and his sons to buy churros. Until then, the team is 4-14 and poised to lose more than 141 games. I counted the people sitting behind left and center fields Thursday. Attendance was announced at 10,560.
Cruel, wrote the man at the suburban paper.
I see some hope, if someone else would write about it.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.