Who Is NBA Superfan Jimmy Goldstein And How'd He Get So Rich?

If you've ever watched or attended an NBA Finals game, you've almost certainly caught a glimpse of Jimmy Goldstein. Also known as the "NBA Superfan," Jimmy is hard to miss. Whenever he is in public (and perhaps when he's at home too), Jimmy is dressed in head-turning outfits that typically include:

• Studded black leather pants
• Highly decorated leather jacket (frequently black but sometimes yellow, white, red, or orange)
• Snakeskin boots
• Bandana around the neck
• Floppy leather hat that is supposedly made from python.

These peacocking elements encase an 85-year-old wiry frame with shoulder-length silver-blond hair popping out on both sides of the floppy python hat. Oh, and he is typically accompanied arm-in-arm by a model roughly a quarter his age.

Jimmy's courtside presence and NBA games is nearly as recognizable as that of superstar players. Over the last few decades, Jimmy has probably attended more games than any non-player or team executive. He has literally attended thousands of NBA games, including virtually every single NBA Finals since the early 1990s.

Goldstein reportedly spends over $500,000 per year on NBA tickets, holding season tickets for both the Lakers and Clippers and flying around the country to catch more than 100 games annually. Despite living in Los Angeles – in arguably the city's most famous mansion (and we'll cover his "Big Lebowski mansion" in a moment) – he claims no allegiance to any one team. His fandom is broader. He's loyal to the game itself, the spectacle, the athleticism, and the drama.

But amid all the courtside glamor, one question lingers: Who is this man, and how did he make the kind of money that lets him live like this? For years,

A Lifelong Obsession With Basketball

Jimmy Goldstein was born on January 5, 1940, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father, C. Ellis Goldstein, owned a department store called Zahn's in nearby Racine. The family was financially comfortable, but Jimmy would later say his father's buttoned-up style, including conservative suits and a formal demeanor, directly inspired his own lifelong rebellion through fashion.

Jimmy's obsession with basketball began early. At age 15, he was hired by the Milwaukee Hawks (a precursor to today's Atlanta Hawks) to sit courtside and keep game stats for the team. For a teenage sports fanatic, it was heaven. "Once I sat courtside, I was totally hooked," he later said. "My entire life has been devoted to professional basketball since then. I think there's more athleticism displayed in basketball than in any other sport."

He played basketball at Nicolet High School in Glendale, Wisconsin, then moved west to attend Stanford University, where he studied mathematics and physics. After graduating, he enrolled at UCLA and earned an MBA. He liked California's climate and culture, and he liked being closer to NBA teams year-round.

But while his love for the NBA burned hotter than ever, Goldstein had no interest in working a standard 9-to-5 job. He once said his goal in business was simple: to spend as little time as possible working so that he would have the free time to do the things he really enjoyed.

It turns out he found a surprisingly effective and controversial way to do exactly that.

The Secret Fortune

After earning his MBA from UCLA in the mid-1960s, Jimmy Goldstein took a job with Rammco Investment Corporation, a real estate firm that was making a fortune by buying cheap farmland on the outskirts of Los Angeles and converting it into tract housing. His role involved scouting acquisition targets in areas like Riverside and San Bernardino. Through this work, Goldstein was introduced to the surprisingly profitable world of mobile home parks.

In the early 1980s, he branched out on his own and began acquiring mobile home communities across California. These properties may not have had the glamor of high-rise towers or beachfront condos, but they offered something far more appealing to Goldstein: reliable cash flow, steady occupancy, and huge potential upside, especially in areas with rent control.

Goldstein's strategy was simple, but aggressive. He targeted parks with artificially low rents due to local rent control ordinances, bought them using financing and private capital, then sought to drastically raise the rents. When city governments denied those increases, he took them to court. Over the decades, he has filed dozens of lawsuits against California municipalities, arguing that rent control prevents him from earning a fair return on his investments.

Critics, including city officials and tenant advocates, say Goldstein has made his fortune by exploiting legal loopholes and driving up rents on some of the most economically vulnerable residents in the state. Many of his properties are age-restricted senior communities, where residents live on fixed incomes and cannot afford sudden spikes in housing costs.

Goldstein disagrees with the portrayal of himself as a villain. He believes rent control is fundamentally unfair and claims that many mobile home park residents benefit from below-market leases that inflate the resale value of their homes. In his view, raising rents is not cruelty, but economic correction.

One city attorney who battled Goldstein for years described his approach as "litigation terrorism," accusing him of leveraging the courts to exhaust public resources and pressure cities into settling or caving. Goldstein, for his part, has said he's simply protecting his property rights.

Inside His Mobile Home Park Empire

Jimmy Goldstein built his fortune not from skyscrapers or shopping centers, but from mobile home parks. Across California, particularly in cities like Carson and Palm Springs, he has spent decades acquiring rent-controlled trailer parks and turning them into reliable, high-cash-flow assets.

A few examples illustrate the scale:

• El Dorado Mobile Country Club (Palm Springs): 377 spaces. Estimated average rent: $800.

  Monthly gross: $301,600

• Carson Harbor Village (Carson): 420 spaces. Average rent: $827.

  Monthly gross: $347,340

• Colony Cove Mobile Estates (Carson): 420 spaces. Average rent: $758.

  Monthly gross: $318,360

Together, those three parks alone generate nearly $1 million per month in rental income.

Now consider this: Goldstein is believed to own at least 20 similar parks. Based on an average monthly income of around $322,000 per park, that would put his portfolio's gross rental income at approximately $6.45 million per month, or $77 million per year.

Assuming a 50% profit margin — a conservative estimate in this asset class — Goldstein could be earning around $38 million in profits per year passively from mobile home rent checks.

That kind of income easily supports a life of private jets, courtside NBA seats, and multimillion-dollar architectural renovations — all funded by tenants paying a few hundred dollars a month in rent.

The Subdivision Loophole

One of the most controversial tools in Goldstein's business playbook was his use of a legal loophole that allowed him to sidestep local rent control laws. It centered on a California provision that permitted mobile home parks to be subdivided into individually owned lots. The original intent of the law was to help residents form co-ops and buy their parks, but Goldstein used it in the opposite way.

By filing a subdivision application, even if residents had no desire or financial ability to buy their lots, he could convert a rent-controlled property into a for-sale development. Under the rules at the time, if even one resident agreed to buy, the entire park could be exempted from local rent control. Those who stayed would face sharply higher rents. Those who couldn't afford it were forced to leave.

This maneuver drew immediate backlash. In Palm Springs, Goldstein used it to convert the El Dorado park, sparking a lengthy court battle with the city. He ultimately won the right to proceed and later sued the city for damages, walking away with a nearly seven-figure settlement.

Other landlords soon followed his lead, triggering a wave of similar conversion attempts across the state. Eventually, California lawmakers stepped in. In 2013, the legislature passed a bill requiring majority resident approval for future subdivision conversions, effectively closing the loophole.

Goldstein has always defended the tactic as a legal and rational response to restrictive rent control laws. His critics see it differently, as a calculated way to displace elderly or low-income residents in the name of profit. Either way, it became a signature move in his decades-long war with cities and rent boards.

The Big Lebowski House

While Jimmy Goldstein's fortune was built on mobile home parks, his own home could not be more polar opposite of a double-wide. Jimmy owns one of the most architecturally iconic residences in Los Angeles. The house sits tucked into a hillside above Beverly Hills. It was designed in the early 1960s by John Lautner, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, and completed in 1963 for Helen and Paul Sheats and their five children. So for the first decade, the home was known colloquially as "the Sheats Residence."

One day in 1972, Jimmy was walking his Afghan hound in the neighborhood. He spotted the home and fell instantly in love. He proceeded to buy the Sheats Residence for $182,000. That's the same as around $1.4 million in today's dollars.

At the time, the property was in disrepair. The Sheats had actually removed or altered many of the home's original features. Over the next several decades, he worked closely with Lautner and, later, his apprentice Duncan Nicholson to restore, expand, and perfect the house. The process continued even after Lautner's death in 1994. Around this time, the home became more formally known as "the Sheats-Goldstein Residence."

In the 1990s, he purchased the property next door for $800,000, demolished the existing home, and constructed a dramatic entertainment complex. The addition includes an infinity-edge tennis court overlooking the city, a glass-walled office, and an underground nightclub called Club James, where celebrities like Rihanna, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Mick Jagger have partied. I actually got to take a tour of the home a few years ago, hence the photos above. It was hard to get a good photo of the tennis court, but here you go:

The house gained international fame after appearing in the 1998 cult classic "The Big Lebowski," where it served as the fictional home of pornographer Jackie Treehorn. It has since been used for countless other films, TV series, photo shoots, commercials, and music videos. Here's a scene from The Big Lebowski, followed by me doing my best impression:

Legacy

In 2016, Goldstein announced that he had reached a deal to donate the entire property to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The gift includes not just the main house and the entertainment complex, but also his personal art and fashion collections, his 1961 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, and a $17 million maintenance endowment. After Goldstein's death, the museum plans to open the home for tours and events, making it a permanent part of the city's cultural history.

Jimmy Goldstein is a complicated figure. He never set out to be famous, but wasn't exactly eschewing attention by wearing the most gaudy outfits imaginable courtside at Lakers games. He's beloved in some circles, despised in others.

One thing is for sure: he's one-of-a-kind. A guy who wanted to spend his life doing exactly what he loved: Watching basketball, collecting art, designing wild outfits, and living in a house unlike any other. And that's exactly what he did.