Mark Walter closed the purchase of the Los Angeles Lakers this week at a $12.5 billion valuation, the largest price ever paid for a team in North American sports, dwarfing the $6.05 billion Boston Celtics sale a year earlier. Jeanie Buss sold the franchise her father bought for $67.5 million in 1979, a return that makes even the good real estate in this town look like a savings account. The Lakers' local television deal with Spectrum SportsNet, an equity arrangement that has quietly outperformed the roster for a decade, is the actual engine under that number, not the jersey sales or the ring collection.

Three days later, Forbes had the Dallas Cowboys at $15.5 billion, still the most valuable franchise on Earth and still not for sale, because Jerry Jones does not need a bidding war to know what he has. Line the two up and the message is blunt: the NFL's national television contract prices a team before it plays a down, while the NBA's best-run franchise needed forty-seven years and a Hall of Fame roster to get within shouting distance. Buss got her number. Jones was never going to give anyone the chance to find his.