N.B.A. Owners Approve Mat Ishbia’s Purchase of Suns and Mercury

The N.B.A.’s board of governors on Monday approved the sale of the Phoenix Suns and the W.N.B.A.’s Mercury to Mat Ishbia, the chief executive of United Wholesale Mortgage, in a deal that valued the teams at $4 billion. On Tuesday, the teams announced that the sale had been completed.

Ishbia, 43, had announced in December that he agreed to buy the teams from Robert Sarver, who had been pushed to sell the team amid a scandal. Ishbia purchased 57 percent of the organization, including Sarver’s 37 percent stake, according to a person familiar with the deal who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The board vote was 29-0, with the Cleveland Cavaliers abstaining, according to a memo sent to N.B.A. teams that was obtained by The New York Times. The Cavaliers are owned by Dan Gilbert, who founded Rocket Mortgage, Ishbia’s mortgage industry rival.

The teams’ leadership has been in limbo since September, when N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver suspended Sarver for one year and fined him $10 million after an investigation found that Sarver had mistreated employees — particularly women — over many years. He was also found to have used a racial slur for Black people several times. Sarver was not forced to sell the teams, but he said that he would do so because of a swell of backlash, including from the star Suns point guard Chris Paul.

In a statement Tuesday, Ishbia said the purchase was “the culmination of a lifelong dream.”

“I love the game of basketball deeply, but it’s so much more than that for me,” he said. “Throughout my life, basketball has given me a second family, an education, and so much joy.”

Ishbia played basketball at Michigan State in the early 2000s. His brother Justin Ishbia owns the second-largest stake in the teams and will serve as the teams’ alternate governor, behind his brother.

The N.B.A.’s trading deadline is Thursday, and the Suns could be looking to make moves. In September, the team announced that it had “mutually agreed” with forward Jae Crowder that he would not participate in training camp and he has not appeared in any games this season. Crowder, 32, who joined the Suns in 2020, started all 22 of the team’s postseason games in 2021. The Suns were sixth in the Western Conference, tied with Dallas at 29-26, entering a game with the Nets on Tuesday night.

The Suns have never won an N.B.A. championship, though they appeared in the 2021 finals, losing to the Milwaukee Bucks. The Mercury have won three W.N.B.A. championships; they, too, last appeared in their league’s finals in 2021, but they lost to the Chicago Sky.

Ishbia, who became a billionaire after entering the mortgage business, said in December that he was “confident that we can bring that same level of success” to the Suns and the Mercury.