Billionaire Mat Ishbia buying Phoenix Suns

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver suspended Sarver for one year and fined him $10 million after a year-long investigation into Sarver's history of sexual harassment, using racial slurs and mistreating team employees. After the team's jersey sponsor, PayPal, threatened not to renew their partnership if Sarver remained in charge, Sarver announced he was selling the team in September. 

We now have an expected buyer for the franchise as well as an approximate price tag, as Adrian Wojnarowski reports that Mat Ishbia is finalizing a deal for the club and the sale price will approach $4 billion.

Ishbia is the CEO and president of the largest mortgage lender in the United States, United Wholesale Mortgage. The company, founded by Ishbia's father, went public last January, and Ishbia's estimated net worth is $5.59 billion.

He's also a former Michigan State basketball player, where he played sparingly for a team that reached three Final Fours and won a national title in 2000. Ishbia was a 5'10", 175-pound guard who averaged 0.6 points and 2.4 minutes for the Spartans, and spent a year as a graduate assistant to Coach Tom Izzo when he was in business school. 

He's now the second NBA majority owner to win an NCAA title, along with Michael Jordan. (Grant Hill owns a portion of the Atlanta Hawks.) Last year, Ishbia donated $32 million to MSU athletic programs.

Ishbia's business has put him in direct conflict with Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, the founder and majority stakeholder of Rocket Mortgage. Last year, Ishbia demanded brokers not do business with Rocket and another company, Fairway Independent Mortgage, if they wanted to work with UWM. It's unlikely he will extend this ultimatum to player agents who work with the Cavaliers.

Sarver led a group that purchased the Suns and the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury in 2004 for roughly $400 million. Sarver owns 35 percent of the team, but the structure of the team allows him to sell it in full. Sarver will net roughly $1.4 billion for the sale, around a 1000 percent return on his initial investment of about $140 million.

That's one reason why players and other public figures complained Sarver's punishment was too light, although $10 million is the maximum fine Silver was allowed to levy on an owner. The fine amounts to less than one percent of what Sarver will get from what amounts to a billion-dollar severance package for being one of the NBA's worst owners.

Ishbia has won a national title and built his company into an industry giant. Now he faces his greatest challenge yet: Working with Chris Paul.