share outright while George retained an ownership share as one of the partners in SJSE. Cleveland Cavaliers The Gunds purchased majority interest in the Cleveland Cavaliers from Ted Stepien for $20 million on April 7, 1983. Stepien's Nationwide Advertising Service Inc. and new cable television station Sports Exchange were also part of the sale. The transaction was approved by the National Basketball Association (NBA) Board of Governors one month later on May 9. The league also arranged for the Gunds to pay a cash sum for a first-round selection in each of the subsequent four NBA drafts to recover the ones traded away by Stepien. They succeeded in keeping the team in Cleveland, Ohio and at Richfield Coliseum, which they also owned. Stepien had threatened to move the team to Toronto. The Gunds replaced the team's logo and uniform design, replacing the "swashbuckling swordsman" with the team's nickname of 'Cavs' with a stylized 'V' made of a net and basketball. Under the Gunds' ownership, attendance figures started to rise, and the Cavs enjoyed a period of competitiveness on the basketball court. In the 1994–95 season, Gund Arena was built and replaced the Coliseum, and attendance figures stayed high. According to the Cavs' media guide, the Cavs had the highest attendance figures in franchise history in 15 of the last 16 seasons, heading into the 2004–05 season. His most notable achievement in the final years of his ownership was drafting high school prodigy and Akron, Ohio native LeBron James with the first-overall pick in the 2003 NBA draft, a move which helped rejuvenate interest among the fan base. In 2005, Gund sold controlling interest of the team to Quicken Loans founder and billionaire Dan Gilbert, maintaining a minority ownership stake for himself. Gund has an NBA championship to his credit via his status as minority owner of the team during the 2015–16 title-winning season. In April 2021, Gund's minority share was bought by majority owner Gilbert. Cleveland Rockers The city of Cleveland was granted one of the original 8 franchises of the WNBA in October 1996. The Cleveland Rockers got their nickname from Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1997, they started with such players like Isabelle Fijalkowski and former Harlem Globetrotters member Lynette Woodard, who had been the first female player in Globetrotter history. In October 2003, Gund announced that his Gund Arena Company would no longer operate