The banker who helped save the Golden State Warriors explains how to tell if your team is in the right hands

Getty Images/Ronald Martinez Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks

Give banker Sal Galatioto twenty minutes with a sports team owner, and he’ll tell you whether that team is going to be successful.

In a Bloomberg M&A podcast, Galatioto told reporter Alex Sherman that he is able to walk into a room, meet an owner and tell whether that is going to be a winning franchise.

Galatioto, helped sell the Charlotte Bobcats to Michael Jordan, and the Washington Redskins to Daniel Snyder. He is worked on the sale of the Golden State Warriors to a group led by Joe Lacob, advising the seller to pick Lacob’s bid, and not that bid put together by Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison.

He worked at Societe Generale and Lehman Brothers, and now runs his own firm,Galatioto Sports Partners.

Sherman asked him what separated the best owners from the rest:

If someone is really focused on the team, if somebody cares about the fans, if someone really wants to win. The difference between winning and losing in almost anything is 5%. It is that incremental 5%. If you are willing to do that 5% more than your competitors, you have a better chance to win.

You can just read it in people. You can walk into an organization, and you can say, ‘OK, today they are not doing great, but I can see they have potential to do so much better, because they demand so much from their people.’

Listen to the podcast here