Nick Mileti, who started the Cleveland Cavaliers, passed away at 93.
In 1970, Nick Mileti founded the Cavaliers by paying $3.7 million for the new team. Their first NBA season was in 1970-71. He stayed with the team until 1980 when he sold his share for $1.4 million.
Team Performance and Playoff Runs
While Mileti owned the Cavs, they had a record of 305 wins and 434 losses (.413). They made it to the playoffs three times. The best run was in the 1975-76 season when they beat Baltimore but lost to Boston in the conference finals. "Not winning an NBA title was my biggest regret," Mileti once said. In 2019, he joined the Cavaliers Wall of Honor.
The Richfield Coliseum
Another big achievement for Mileti was building Richfield Coliseum. Politicians couldn’t agree on a downtown arena, so he bought land between Cleveland and Akron. The Coliseum opened on October 26, 1974, as one of the largest arenas at that time with a seating capacity of about 18,544 for hockey games.
According to Bob Dolgan from Cleveland.com, tickets sold out on opening night with prices ranging from $10 to $25 for a crowd of over 21,000 people.
The Cavs played there until moving to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in 1994 under owner Ted Stepien’s leadership.
Joe Tait once said about him: โNick was good for Cleveland… He did a lot of things with other peopleโs money… And they were good things.โ
Fans often remember how visionary he was despite some controversies.
Other Ventures and Teams
Mileti also bought MLB’s then-Cleveland Indians in 1972 along with Howard Metzenbaum and Ted Bonda for $10 million from Vernon Stouffer. That same year he formed Ohio Communications which acquired WKYC AM/1100 and FM/105.7 from NBC; renaming them WWWE-AM and WWWM-FM respectively.
He moved radio play-by-play rights for both teams there too! Plus sports talk host Pete Franklinโs show Sportsline got transferred as well!
In addition to all this craziness , Nick founded Las Vegas Posse (a short-lived CFL team) in ’94 and owned both Cleveland Barons (AHL) & Crusaders (WHA).
During retirement years? Oh boy! He wrote three books: Closet Italians (2004), Beyond Michaelangelo (2005), & The Unscrupulous (2009).
