And all I knew was that he owned a horse farm in Florida.
All of this is very interesting. To me, Harry Mangurian was the guy who saved the Boston Celtics from being turned into the Anchorage Iceboxes or Key West Keystone Kops by buying out John Y. Brown. If that guy had maintained any kind of influence with the team, Red Auerbach really would have gone to New York, Larry Bird would never have signed here, and there is a very real possibility the Boston Celtics would have ceased to exist.
So, yes, say a prayer for the man, or whatever it is you do to honor the distinguished deceased. Harry T. Mangurian was a very important figure in the history of Boston sports.
"That was a very dark and difficult time in the history of the franchise," asserts Jan Volk, then the Celtics' assistant general manager and later, of course, the successor to Auerbach as GM. "I think Harry Mangurian is underappreciated and under-recognized for who he was and what he did for the team at that particular point in time. Some of it was circumstantial, but he certainly provided a necessary alternative to John Y."
"He was an owner at a very interesting time," said NBA commissioner David Stern. "He had a colorful and interesting partner, and he was a key component in holding that team together at a very difficult time."
The Mangurian money had come from a family furniture store in Rochester, N.Y. Harry T. Mangurian Jr., born 1926, died 2008, parlayed the money he made from the store into a merger with the General Portland Cement Company. He had interests in banking, real estate, and construction. He founded Drexel Investments Inc., a Fort Lauderdale-based firm that constructed and sold 10,000 units in South Florida.
He entered sports by buying into the Buffalo Braves, who were, for a brief time, an important part of the fabric of life in Western New York. He was John Y. Brown's partner in the great team swap of 1978, when Irv Levin bought the Braves from them and moved the franchise to San Diego, with the two Buffalo owners assuming control of the Celtics. The man who brokered that deal was a bright young league counsel named David Stern.
