Steve Ballmer Talks Basketball at Coins2Day’s Brainstorm Tech Dinner

During the night, Ballmer talked to Coins2Day’s Adam Lashinsky about working with the NBA during the highly publicized $2 billion deal with former owner Donald Sterling. “I like basketball and I’ve liked basketball for a long time,” he said. “When I retired [in 2013 from Microsoft], within a week, I visited the commissioner of the NBA and the commissioner of the NFL—two sports I was interested in.”

Although Ballmer admitted “nothing much ever came out of football,” he added it’s “probably okay.” Why? “There are a lot of tough challenges from the football world despite the fact that football is doing very well from a business perspective.”

When he inquired about bringing a basketball team to Seattle, he was told it would be difficult since the NBA has made a push to keep teams in their cities and not move them elsewhere. “I said, ‘Shoot I better go to Milwaukee because it was the only team for sale at the time,” Ballmer explained. “So, I got on a plane, flew to Milwaukee, drove around the city, and went to a game.”

But Ballmer was late to the bidding process and wasn’t able to secure a deal. That’s when he learned about Sterling selling the team. He jumped at the opportunity to get the L.A. Franchise. “I knew about what I was willing to pay,” he explained, “the only problem was to figure out who the heck was really going to be selling the team.”

“It wasn’t done with what I call traditional investment banker stuff,” said Ballmer, causing the audience to erupt in laughter. “The investment banker came into the process in about the last week.”

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Ballmer also shared what he’s learned from being an NBA franchise owner. “It is really exciting to own a basketball team,” he said. “It’s not like trading basketball cards. It doesn’t work like that.”

“I’ll say it in tech speak—there’s a major product wave once a year…you do all product development,” he added. “Basically to the end of the season.”