Wes Edens reflects on 10 years of ownership of Bucks and sets sights on another championship

Wes Edens settled into a leather chair in an executive lounge in Fiserv Forum before his Milwaukee Bucks were going to take on the Los Angeles Lakers. Opened in 2018, Fiserv Forum is the second-youngest arena in the NBA. It’s the heart of what is now called the Deer District, and home to a basketball team that has made the playoffs in eight straight seasons, the second-longest streak in franchise history.

Two right turns out of the door and a few hundred feet up is a championship banner.

It’s quite the change from Edens’ introduction to Milwaukee on April 16, 2014, when he and Marc Lasry joined former Sen. Herb Kohl in the atrium of the nearly 30-year-old Bradley Center to announce the sale of the Bucks.

Edens, the chairman and founder of the Fortress Investment Group and founder of New Fortress Energy, had partnered with Lasry to purchase the Bucks from Kohl for an NBA-record $550 million. It was their formal introduction to the city, at a time of excitement about change but also uncertainty regarding the future of the franchise.

In his first interview with the Journal Sentinel, Edens said, “We are going to build an arena. We are going to be part of the community. The Bucks are going to be a great basketball team. That's our goal and that's what's going to happen."

Fast forward a decade.

Those statements had been checked off, one by one. Yet Edens said the experience of owning the Bucks has surpassed his admittedly high expectations.

Edens couldn’t help but smile in thinking back over the 10 years.

“I think sometimes ignorance is bliss, right?” he told the Journal Sentinel at Fiserv Forum. “While I know personally I 100% had aspirations from the first minute of the first day to bring a championship back to Milwaukee, 100%, I probably didn’t fully appreciate how hard that was.”

Bucks’ success, franchise value has risen over last decade

In the months after the league approved their bid, the ownership group gradually expanded to include Jamie Dinan, Mike Fascitelli and many local investors. But Edens and Lasry remained the principal owners until Lasry sold his 25% share to the Haslam Sports Group in April 2023.

The $800 million price tag of that transaction gave the Bucks a valuation of $3.2 billion.

“When we bought the Bucks for 550 million dollars, it was the highest price paid ever for an NBA franchise,” Edens said. “Which is an amazing thing. That lasted I think for three weeks, then Steve Ballmer paid $2 billion for the Clippers. But it’ll always be the highest price ever paid at the time. It just shows you the shift that was happening.”

He noted how Kohl bought the Bucks for $18 million and Jerry Reinsdorf bought the controlling stake of the Chicago Bulls for $9.2 million, both in 1985.

“I think that you’ve seen the league really evolve over the last 10 years I’ve been there, from some of the original owners that then kind of timed out, Senator Kohl being one of them, and now it’s a big business,” Edens added. “These are multi-billion dollar assets. Every single one of them. With that, in the room when you have an NBA meeting, owners in there, it’s a pretty impressive group – present company excepted. There’s a lot of very capable, very serious people. And I’ll say this, it is remarkable how partner-ly it is.

“People are obviously highly competitive on the court. So no matter who your good friends are you want to kill them on the court, that’s for sure, and win every game, but off the court people really treat it like a partnership for the most part."

That competitive nature has translated to the court.

Over the last decade the Bucks have become one of the most consistent winners in the NBA. The 2020-21 championship, the franchise’s first in 50 seasons, is the capstone on eight straight playoff appearances. Only Boston has a longer active streak.

“He brought a wining culture,” Bucks all-star Khris Middleton told the Journal Sentinel. “He’s a great businessman and him and his partners wanted to bring that business culture of winning to our sports team. He did a lot. He had his hands on a lot of things, on the day-to-day operations as far as making sure things were running smoothly and put people in place that he had confidence in that can take us to the next level as a world-class, first-class organization.”

Jon Horst is one of a handful of organizational members who have been with the team since that news conference in the Bradley Center. Edens was governor of the team when Horst was promoted to general manager in 2017, and he's been tasked with building – and sustaining – the Bucks as one of the top teams in the league.

Since 2014-15, only Golden State, Boston and the Los Angeles Clippers have won more regular-season games than Milwaukee. Only Golden State, Boston and Cleveland have more playoff wins.And a big part of that winning and next level is, frankly, the cost of it.

A championship bonus in Jrue Holiday’s contract pushed the Bucks into the luxury tax for the 2020-21 season, and per the salary-tracking web site www.spotrac.com, the team has spent an estimated $190.6 million in tax payments since then.

“First of all, Wes and Jimmy and Jamie are sometimes pleased, never satisfied – I love that,” Bucks and Fiserv Forum president Peter Feigin told the Journal Sentinel. “'How can we envision what the next level is and get it done?' Listen, there’s an uncomfortable nature. Don’t kid yourself. These guys are in business, they build, they make money – they have not been in businesses to lose tens of millions of dollars in a year. So there’s real pressure of how do you continue to grow the revenue side of the business to try to absorb the expenses in a small market? Listen, I manage the business for them, they’ve been aggressively fair. That’s great. You can’t ask for anything (more). Pleased but not satisfied.”

Edens noted the good fortune ownership had in inheriting Giannis Antetokounmpo and Middleton, but retaining them through multiple contracts – and capitalizing on their talents by bringing in players around them – required a heavy financial commitment.

That includes the unseen investments in practice and workout facilities, travel, training, nutrition, technology – hardware and software – and creature comforts for players, coaches and staff.

On the court, it means empowering Horst to trade for Holiday and Damian Lillard. To re-sign Middleton, Brook Lopez, Bobby Portis and Pat Connaughton to multiple contracts. Draft picks have been swapped and traded out to 2031.

“The real challenge is you want to win a championship, so you’re really between good and great,” Feigin said. “How do you really get there? It’s so fragile. They realize every year it’s this moment where you’re a championship-caliber team, they want to go for it.”

Only Golden State ($627.9 million), the Clippers ($372.9) and Brooklyn ($214.1) have spent more in tax payments than the Bucks the last four seasons.

"If you kind of have a segment of the population in your organization that’s growing rapidly in their performance and therefore the expectations of the organization – but the organization doesn’t keep up or stay ahead of it – I don’t think you can be successful," Horst told the Journal Sentinel. "Where Wes and these guys are brilliant is I believe we’ve stayed ahead of it. We’ve not only grown with our people but we’ve maybe even tried to grow ahead of our people and be ahead of the curve and do things differently and better and more aggressively and be bold in different things every step of the way.

"I think that’s why we’ve been successful. And I think that only happens by being allowed to do our jobs and take those risks and take those bold moves and to be resourced to do that."

When presented that financial outlay, Edens didn't flinch.

“Over the last 10 years and probably even longer than that, very, very few teams that compete in the final four of the NBA are not in the tax,” Edens said matter-of-factly. “I think it’s one of those situations where when you’re in a position to win – at least from my perspective – the No. 1 objective is to win, right? That’s what we said, but we’ve put our money where our mouth is. We’re the second- or third-highest payroll in the league and last time I checked Milwaukee is not the second- or third-biggest market in the league.

“So, it’s been great to have Jimmy Haslam as a partner. This is our first year together, full year, and he’s been a remarkable partner, he and his wife, Dee. They’re very like-minded. They’ve had a lot of success off the court. We want to have success on the court. Last year didn’t turn out how we wanted it to. This year hasn’t been written yet, but knock wood, we feel really good about where we are at this point. But if you have the opportunity to win, from our perspective, this is why you do it if you can afford to do it.”

Fiserv Forum, Deer District part of legacy

For years, the area next to the Bradley Center sat vacant.

The arena itself was deemed unsuitable by the league, and in 2014 new commissioner Adam Silver made it clear that for the Bucks to remain in Milwaukee a new arena had to be built. Kohl played a huge role in that, pledging $100 million to the project while Edens and Lasry committed more than that.

But to get the project up and running – let alone completed – the city and state were going to be asked to contribute with public funds.

Edens is from Montana but his businesses are based in New York. He knew the principal ownership group was going to have to put in the work to bridge not only political parties but the wary eye of a Wisconsin and Milwaukee fan base wondering the true intentions of “outsiders” buying their team.

“When you look at it, with the benefit of time, it was amazingly bipartisan,” Edens recalled of the process to secure public funding.

“I say on infrastructure projects all the time, that it takes everyone to say yes and really one person to say no and the whole thing goes sideways. If you think of the people that had to participate both in the state and local level, everyone pretty much said yes. And I don’t think they really perceived us as carpetbaggers or people that were in here with untoward aspirations to get rich quick. They wanted us to succeed because we wanted to succeed. Again, that word authenticity. We felt authentic to them and they felt authentic to us. So, it was a great experience actually.”

In 2018, Fiserv Forum opened.

“It was always about we agreed to do this, the senator was incredibly generous, gave 100 million dollars towards the building of this arena and so we tried our darndest,” Edens said. “I had dozens of meetings with legislators in Madison. We tried as hard as we could. The whole organization did. We were fortunate enough to get enough support so we could afford to do it and then as a result this is where we are. And now the Bucks are in Milwaukee for, hopefully forever.”

Edens said he felt more confident in the construction of the arena and the development around it, largely because that was more in the wheelhouse of an ownership group that had vast experience in real estate and building. But they still had to deliver.

“That part of it I think is more expected and a reasonable expectation if you really know what you’re doing and you have a bunch of guys around who have done a good job there,” he said. “I think the basketball team, to come in and win a championship and be as competitive as we’ve been the whole time, I think that’s more remarkable. It’s more difficult to replicate for others, that’s for sure.”

Fiserv Forum brings some of the biggest musical tours in the country through the city, along with other showcase events. The Deer District is still evolving as an entertainment hub, with The Trade Hotel opening in 2023 and a new music venue in the works. But it was the joyous, raucous gathering of thousands of people outside the arena when the Bucks took on, and beat, the Phoenix Suns in the 2021 NBA Finals that put the vision of 2014 into three dimensions.

“It’s been amazing to see the transformation – the physical transformation of our city, the physical transformation of our organization, the competitive transformation, just culturally – everything has grown and improved and been invested in and cared for and been pushed," said Horst, who has been in Milwaukee for over 16 years. "And Wes is at the top of our organization. He’s been there from the beginning and has been a leader in this organization and pushed that change and pushed those developments and that growth.”

Edens looks ahead to next decade

Since that Bradley Center news conference on April 16, 2014, eight NBA teams have changed majority ownership. Portland will have to be sold at some point and the league will consider adding expansion franchises.

In short order Edens is becoming one of the elder statesmen in league ownership, and his influence is palpable. He's been on the leading edge of the NBA's efforts in creating and growing the Basketball Africa League and sits on the NBA Africa Board of Directors. The Bucks were part of the league's first preseason showcase in the Middle East. And, specifically to the NBA, Silver noted that Edens serves on the NBA's audit committee, which oversees the finances and strategic planning of the league.

"His operations and investment experience has been an enormous resource," Silver told the Journal Sentinel in an email. "And now with the addition of Jimmy Haslam as co-owner and alternate governor, the Bucks are poised to continue their upward trajectory."

Silver spoke of "parity of opportunity" at the All-Star Game in Indianapolis, and the Bucks can be held up as a standard bearer for success in mid-sized media markets.

"The Bucks are a terrific example of what we strive for in the NBA in terms of creating a league where every team has at its disposal the resources and tools necessary to compete for a championship," Silver said. "The Bucks have strong leadership on and off the court, they’ve drafted and developed players well, and they find ways to improve their roster through trades and free agency."

Much has changed in 10 years, in Milwaukee and the NBA. It's not a short amount of time, but it can be a blink when it comes to sports ownership. Kohl owned the Bucks for nearly 30 years, and the most tenured owners in the NBA date to the 1980s and early 1990s.

For his part, Edens has insisted to the Journal Sentinel on several occasions over the last year that he has no interest in moving on from the Bucks anytime soon.

So what does he see as he looks ahead to the coming decade?

“I want to have a chance to compete,” he began. “I think we started with a very young team and it’s turned out to be less young. We’ve had almost the entire cycle of their professional career with Giannis and with Khris. We’re very blessed about that. Two extraordinary basketball players and also just amazing humans. They’re both really, really talented and great, great people and have kind of built around them with Brook and you’ve got a whole group of people that have kind of come in, Damian this year. Obviously we’ve tried to take the core that we’ve had and make the most out of it. And those guys are older but they’re not old, right? So we’re far from the end, knock wood.

“At some point of course all things will come to an end and then I think it’ll be a very different experience and a really exciting one to try and rebuild. And then we’ll find out how talented we really are in that case.

"But that’s a very different situation. Some teams have managed it well. If you look at what Miami has done, they’ve actually stayed really competitive with obviously the teams that have won and the teams that have almost won. They’ve had a great run. They’re probably one of the real examples of you don’t have to go through some rebuilding thing that’s a dumpster fire, that you can actually really make it happen. So that’s great. But I think that will be another chapter of it and it’ll be an exciting one as well.”

But, of course, he wasn’t about to keep his gaze too far in the distance.

The Bucks were about to tip off against the Lakers, and you could make out the muffled roar of a sold-out crowd through the walls.

The playoffs are about to begin anew.

Edens smiled recounting some friendly regular-season trash talk with friend and competitor Wyc Grousbeck, the majority owner and governor of the Celtics. Boston won its last title in 2008, under current Bucks head coach Doc Rivers. Rivers, of course, was hired by the Bucks at midseason this year to help them reach that pinnacle.

“Hopefully, hopefully another one,” Edens said. “I really hope that. It was 50 years between the last one, I hope it’s not 50 years between these."

It’s a shared vision.

Antetokounmpo grinned, filling a plate of food after a game.

“Mr. Wes has been always nice to me, nice to my teammates,” he told the Journal Sentinel. “He’s always supporting of the team and the people that works for the team. So he’s always great playing for him. And, I hope as we’re moving forward we can win a championship for him.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bucks, NBA have changed a lot in Wes Edens' 10 years of ownership