Roy Boe, Who Owned The Islanders And The Nets But Sold Dr. J, 79, NY Times
DGH
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/sports/09boe.html?ref=obituaries
Roy Boe, Who Owned Islanders and Nets but Sold Dr. J, Dies at 79
By BRUCE WEBER [New York Times]
Roy L. M. Boe, whose simultaneous stewardship of two New York area sports
franchises, the Nets and the Islanders, brought championships, controversy
and financial struggles, died Sunday, June 7, 2009, in Bridgeport, Conn. He
was 79 and lived in Fairfield, Conn.
The cause was heart failure, his daughter Amanda Faulkner said. Boe had
survived esophageal cancer and was told last year that he had lymphoma.
In 1969, Boe was a successful fashion entrepreneur when he bought the New
York Nets, now the New Jersey Nets. At the time, the team played its home
games at the Commack Arena on Long Island as part of the American Basketball
Association.
Boe immediately moved the team's home court closer to New York, to the
Island Garden in West Hempstead (and later to the Nassau Coliseum in
Uniondale); hired Lou Carnesecca, the coach of St. John's University, as the
franchise's coach and general manager, and signed a star player, Rick Barry.
The Nets reached the A.B.A. finals in 1972, losing to the Indiana Pacers.
After Barry left the team, the Nets traded for Julius Erving, who led the
Nets to championships in 1974 and 1976. But that summer, when the A.B.A.
merged with the National Basketball Association, the fees to enter the
league strained the franchise's finances.
At the same time, Erving was insisting that his contract be re-negotiated,
and Boe was under pressure by other A.B.A. owners not to do so. They feared
their star players would demand the same treatment.
In a bind, Boe decided to sell Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers, a move that
was widely reviled by Nets fans and sports writers.
"What it came down to was, he didn't have the money," the current president
of the Nets, Rod Thorn, who was an assistant coach for the team in 1976,
said Monday. "The owners in the league felt getting into the N.B.A. was the
panacea that was going to solve all their problems, and the price for Roy
getting in was selling Julius."
The next season, Boe moved the Nets to New Jersey. He sold the team in 1978.
He lost his hockey team that year as well. Boe owned about 20 percent of the
Islanders, which he helped found in 1972, and served as general partner,
overseeing the operation of a team that acquired the coach, Al Arbour, and
the players - Denis Potvin, Brian Trottier, Mike Bossy, Clark Gillies and
Bobby Nystrom - who would lead it to four straight Stanley Cups, from 1980
through 1983.
But Boe never got to celebrate those championships. Burdened by debt - the
Islanders still owed payments to the National Hockey League and to New York
Rangers stemming from their entry into the league - Boe was forced to sell.
Roy Lars Magnus Boe was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 14, 1929, to parents of
Norwegian stock. His father was a food broker. Boe graduated from Yale,
served in the Army during the Korean War and founded a women's sportswear
manufacturer, Boe Jests, with his first wife.
Later, he became an owner of the Westchester Bulls, a football team
affiliated with the New York Giants. In recent years he owned two minor
league hockey teams, the Worcester Ice Cats in Massachusetts and the
Bridgeport Sound Tigers.
Boe's first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter Amanda,
who lives in Rowayton, Conn., he is survived by his wife, Betty Broderick
Boe; a sister, Janet, of Manhattan; two other daughters, Susan and Kate,
both also of Manhattan; two sons, Roy Jr., who is known as Sam, of Bedford,
N.Y., and Todd, of Darien, Conn.; and six grandchildren. His daughter Jeremy
died in 2007.