Ozzie Silna Net Worth

What Was Ozzie Silna's Net Worth?

Ozzie Silna was an American businessman who had a net worth of $300 million at the time of his death in 2016. Ozzie Silna began his professional career in the textile industry alongside his brother, Daniel. The brothers had always dreamed of owning a basketball team, and they purchased the American Basketball League's Carolina Cougars in 1974. Their plan was to move the Cougars to the NBA when the ABA and NBA merged. They moved the entire team to St. Louis, Missouri, in the hope that it would make their inclusion in the NBA more viable. They renamed the team the Spirits of St. Louis, and the team played through the 1976 season. The franchise ultimately folded without ever joining the NBA, releasing some incredibly talented players to other teams. Ozzie and Dan negotiated a deal in which they received $2.2 million upfront and 1/7 of the four remaining ABA teams' television revenue in perpetuity. The end result is that, after the eventual merger with the NBA, the Silnas earned nearly $800 million in profits from television revenue. Ozzie Silna passed away from cancer on April 26, 2016, at the age of 83.

Early Life

Ozzie Silna was born in 1932 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Ozzie's parents were Latvian Jewish immigrants, and when he was six years old, the family moved to New Jersey. There, his father launched a textile business. Silna studied at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and he served in the U.S. Army. In 1969, he started a knitting company with his brother, Dan; they sold the company two years later. Ozzie also had a sister, Miriam.

Craig Barrett, President of Intel and Ozzie Silna (Photo by Dale Wilcox/via Getty)

Career

After buying the American Basketball League team the Carolina Cougars in 1974, Ozzie and Dan moved the team to St. Louis, Missouri, which was the largest U.S. city without a professional basketball team at the time. The team was renamed the Spirits of St. Louis, and in 1975, they upset reigning ABA champions the New York Nets in the Eastern Division Finals before losing to the Kentucky Colonels. During the following season, the Spirits weren't as successful, and in May 1976, the Silnas announced that they had decided to move the team to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they would be called the Utah Rockies. There had previously been an attempted merger between the Spirits and the Utah Stars, but the Stars folded before it could go through. The Spirits subsequently purchased the rights to some of the best players from the stars, including Moses Malone. The Spirits never moved to Utah, and they were excluded from the ABA–NBA merger, with their players going into a special dispersal draft.

In June 1976, the owners of the merging ABA teams agreed to pay the Silnas and the other co-owners of the Spirits $2.2 million in cash as well as a 1/7 share of the teams' television broadcast revenue "for as long as the NBA or its successors continues in its existence" if the Spirits folded. The Spirits' owners received $521,749 during the first year of the deal, but after the popularity of the NBA increased, they were paid more than $4 million per year during the 1990s. They made over $12 million from 1999 to 2002 and more than $15 million from 2003 to 2006. By 2014, the Silnas had received around $300 million, then they entered into a deal with the NBA and the former ABA teams in which Ozzie and Dan would receive $500 million upfront from the ABA teams, and those teams would receive a majority stake in the Spirits of St. Louis Basketball Club, L.P.

Personal Life and Death

In the '90s, Ozzie and Dan invested millions of dollars with Bernie Madoff, and according to Dan, they lost all the money they invested. However, Irving Picard, the trustee for the victims of Madoff's Ponzi scheme claimed that the brothers received $24 million in "fictitious profits" from Madoff, and he filed a lawsuit against them. The Silnas said that Picard's calculations were incorrect, and they countersued.

Ozzie died of cancer on April 26, 2016, at the age of 83. At the time of his death, he was married to his second wife, Wendy. He had five children: Robin and Jeffrey from his first marriage and Sophie, Samantha, and Spencer from his second marriage. Ozzie was a supporter of Heal the Bay and the Malibu Boys and Girls Club, and he served as the treasurer of the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy.

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