Bill Simmons Thinks The Clippers Are Going To Sell For $1.7 Billion
"My gut feeling: $1.75 billion. And that might be low," he wrote in his column about the ousting of Donald Sterling on Thursday.
That'd be three-times as much as the $575 million that Forbes says the team is worth.
There's reason to believe Simmons knows what he's talking about.
He's a Clippers season ticket holder, and wrote that he's close to many people inside the organization. He also correctly predicted that Adam Silver would try to force Sterling to sell the Clippers before Silver's announcement - which no one else was predicting at the time.
The value of NBA franchises is skyrocketing. The Clippers are in a huge market, their local TV deal is up at the end of the 2016 season, and there are already billionaires lining up to own an NBA team.
Most people expect the bidding war to hit at least $1 billion. Simmons is even more bullish.