Phoenix Suns’ new owner played for his hometown Maccabi team

Mat Ishbia, a walk-on at Michigan State, replaced another Jewish owner who was mired in scandal

Mat Ishbia (#15) with his Michigan State teammates during the Spartans’ run to the 2000 NCAA championship. Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

By Louis Keene December 20, 2022

Mat Ishbia, a mortgage-lending magnate who played for his city’s Maccabi team as a 13-year-old, has purchased the Phoenix Suns for $4 billion, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported Tuesday, replacing a Jewish owner who had fallen into disgrace.

Ishbia, 42, who will also acquire the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury in the deal, grew up in a Jewish family in Birmingham, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The Detroit Jewish News named him its Jewish athlete of the year in 1998, when he was a high school senior.

“I think I understand the game and I enjoy it, I always like to be around it,” the 5-foot-10 guard said at the time. “I think I could see myself being a coach.”

Though he debated playing Division III ball or heading to the Ivy League, he eventually joined Michigan State’s basketball team as a walk-on, and played sparingly for the next four years as the Spartans made four final fours and won a national championship in 2000.

He succeeded his father as chief executive of United Wholesale Mortgage in 2013 and took the company public in January 2021, which made Ishbia a billionaire. (The company’s biggest rival, Rocket Mortgage, is run by another Jewish NBA owner, the Cavaliers’ Dan Gilbert.)

Ishbia expressed his interest in buying an NBA franchise in an interview with the Jewish News two months after the company’s IPO.

“I’m very blessed and lucky to have the means to be able to buy a sports team, which is always a dream,” he said. “I wasn’t good enough to play for one, so maybe I should own one, right? One day will I look at doing that? Absolutely, I will.”

Ishbia will replace Robert Sarver, who was suspended for a year by the NBA and fined $10 million in September after an investigation revealed an extended history of racist abuse and sexual harassment of Suns employees. The NBA did not force him to sell the team — NBA commissioner Adam Silver intimated that it would be legally difficult to — but Sarver announced he would not long after the suspension was announced.

Louis Keene is a reporter for the Forward. His work has also been published in The New York Times, New York magazine and Vice. He is based in Los Angeles.

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