Gordon Gund
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Gordon Gund (born October 15, 1939) is the former principal owner of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, a co-owner of the San Jose Sharks NHL team, and remains the CEO of Gund Investment Corporation and a minority owner of the Cavaliers.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Gund is a member of one of Cleveland's more prominent families. He gradually began going blind in the 1960s because of the disease retinitis pigmentosa. By 1970, Gund was totally blind. As a result, during his tenure as an owner, he has never been able to see a game played by any of his teams.
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[edit] Term as an NHL owner
[edit] California Golden Seals
Gund's brother, George, held a minority interest in the California Golden Seals of the NHL, when George convinced majority owner Mel Swig to relocate the franchise to the Gunds' hometown in 1976. Renamed the Cleveland Barons (after the former American Hockey League team), they played at The Coliseum in Richfield, which had been vacated by the Cleveland Crusaders of the World Hockey Association when they moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota to become the second incarnation of the Minnesota Fighting Saints.
The Gunds would buy Swig's share of the Barons following a dismal 1976–77 season, and as they were able to infuse new money into the team, acquiring better players, the team's fortunes seemed to turn, until a late-season slump knocked them out of playoff contention.
[edit] Minnesota North Stars
At the end of the 1977–78 season, plans to buy the Coliseum outright fell through, and the Barons' fan base placed the franchise's viability in serious doubt. Meanwhile, the ownership of the Minnesota North Stars could no longer sustain the team. Since Minnesota was perceived as the more desirable hockey market at the time, NHL President John Ziegler oversaw a merger between the two franchises, with the Gunds assuming ownership of the North Stars, and Minnesota moving into Cleveland's position in the Adams Division. Within three seasons, the North Stars would make the Stanley Cup Finals, thanks to the Gunds' willingness to invest in the team.
After the NHL geographically realigned their divisions in 1981, placing the North Stars in the rough-and-tumble Norris Division, the Gunds would see attendance drop at the Metropolitan Sports Center while the team struggled on the ice. While there was a strong core of die-hard fans, the team often struggled to sell out its home games.
[edit] San Jose Sharks
Finally, the Gunds decided to relocate the franchise to the San Francisco Bay Area, the original home of their former team. Ziegler and the league refused to allow this move, but allowed the Gunds to sell the North Stars to Howard Baldwin and granted them an expansion team in the Bay Area, which became the San Jose Sharks.
With an expansion roster, the Sharks finished last in the NHL standings in their first two seasons, when they played out of the Cow Palace. With the opening of the San Jose Arena in 1993, however, the Gunds would be able to spend more on the team, and they made waves throughout the NHL with high-profile first-round upsets in the 1994 and 1995 playoffs. While the franchise could not maintain consistent success on the ice, they have enjoyed a high level of popularity, and their home arena is consistently one of the loudest in the NHL.
In February of 2002, the Gunds sold the Sharks to a consortium, named San Jose Sports and Entertainment Enterprises.
[edit] Term as an NBA owner
The Gunds bought the Cleveland Cavaliers from infamous NBA owner Ted Stepien in 1983, in order to keep the team in Cleveland and at Richfield Coliseum.
Under Gund's ownership, attendance figures started to rise, and the Cavaliers enjoyed a period of competitiveness on the basketball court. In the 1994–1995 season, Gund Arena (since renamed Quicken Loans Arena) was built and replaced the Coliseum, and attendance figures stayed high. According to the Cavaliers' media guide, the Cavs had the highest attendance figures in franchise history in 15 of the last 16 seasons, heading into the 2004–2005 season. These numbers seem false because the team struggled in the standings in the late 1990s and early 2000s and a "sea of blue" could be seen from the lack of a crowd at Gund Arena.
Gund Arena became a cornerstone of the redevelopment of downtown Cleveland, which was also bolstered by Jacobs Field, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the new Cleveland Browns Stadium. The Gunds would also operate one of the founding franchises of the WNBA, the Cleveland Rockers. They would also bring hockey to Gund Arena, in the form of the International Hockey League's Cleveland Lumberjacks. His most notable achievement in the final years of his ownership was drafting high school prodigy and Akron, Ohio native LeBron James with the 1st overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, A move which helped rejeuvenate interest among the Cavs fanbase.
In 2005, Gund sold controlling interest of the team to Quicken Loans founder and billionare Dan Gilbert, maintaining a minority ownership stake for himself.
[edit] Life outside of sports
Gund is the former President of the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts. He went to college at Harvard and has honorary doctorates from Gothenburg University in Sweden, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Whittier College and the University of Vermont. He serves as director of the Kellogg Company of Battle Creek, Michigan, and of Corning Incorporated in Corning, New York.
In 1971, Gund co-founded the The Foundation Fighting Blindness with Bernard Berman and remains active as chairman of the board of directors.
Gund and his wife, Llura, reside in Princeton, New Jersey; they have two children.
Gund is featured on ESPN.com's Page 2 of the "Here's Looking At You" column where he was compared as a look alike to Jim Carrey's character in The Mask.
