Businessman, philanthropist and professional sports team owner George Gund III died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer.

Gund, 75, had been undergoing cancer treatments the past 18 months. He died in Palm Springs, Calif.

George, along with his brother Gordon, bought the Cavaliers basketball franchise from Ted Stepien in 1983 for $20 million. They sold the team in 2005 to Quicken Loans founder and billionaire Dan Gilbert in 2005.

He also owned the Cleveland Barons hockey team, along with Gordon, which played two seasons at the old Richfield Coliseum, until merging with the Minnesota North Stars in the summer of 1978. In 1990, they earned the rights to San Jose Sharks, an expansion team, after giving up their ownership rights to the Minnesota North Stars, according to ESPN.com. He sold the Sharks in 2002 to the Sharks Sports & Entertainment.

George Gund was not the enthusiastic basketball fan like his younger brother Gordon, now 73, said former Cavs radio and television announcer Joe Tait.

"He wasn't big into basketball like Gordon was," Tait said. "George had more of a passing interest.

"But George loved to travel, and he traveled all over the world. He would show up to Cavs games on the road unexpectedly."

Tait said he wouldn't know that Gund was at the game until Cuban cigar ashes would drop on his scorebook.

"I would look up and see a big smile on his face. Then George would vanish until I saw ashes again from his next cigar."

Tait said George loved hockey and once suited for practice with the North Stars as a goalie. He showed Tait a picture and asked him how he liked the team's new goalie.

"He was one unique individual," Tait said.

A film fan, Gund also founded the Cleveland Cinematique in 1984 and was a founding trustee of the Cleveland International Film Festival.

He also served on the board of the George Gund Foundation, which his father founded in 1952.

"George was a kind and thoughtful and generous man," said David Abbott, who has been the foundation's executive director since 2003. "He was also very funny and had a low key way of speaking which could disarm people. He lived life to the fullest."

Geoffrey Gund, president of the board of trustees, issued a statement on behalf of The George Gund Foundation:

"The deep sadness that my family feels at the passing of my brother George is shared by the entire extended family of The George Gund Foundation and, I am sure, by those who knew George through the Foundation's work," the statement read. "He served faithfully and with honor as a trustee of the Foundation for many years carrying out the wishes of our father, his namesake, to contribute to human well-being and the progress of society. He enthusiastically supported the Foundation's long-term and patient investments in the transformation of Cleveland and he also personally engaged in that effort."

He was a trustee emeritus of the Cleveland Museum of Art and a national trustee of the Cleveland Orchestra and avidly supported the creation of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

"In all of his endeavors George was a thoughtful, generous and gentle presence," the s t atement said. " He will be greatly missed but always remembered . ”

He was born in Cleveland on May 7, 1937 to Jessica Roesler and George Gund II, once considered the richest and most powerful banker in Cleveland.

Instead of a conservative son a banker, Gund was a rebel. Gund got kicked out of some of the finest prep schools in the country. A high school dropout, he worked on a ore boat as a decked hand at 16 and joined the Marines two years later, getting his GED and a Good Conduct Medal.

Gund was known for bouncing around the country and world. Cell phones were a large part of his life. He could be seen juggling the phones, one in his hand while the other phones plastered to each of his ears.

But with all his travels, Cleveland was special to him.

"I really like Cleveland," Gund said in a story printed in The Plain Dealer in 1997. "I feel a sense of roots there. I guess I could live in Cleveland, but the way I travel I don't really live anywhere."

He liked to keep a low profile and did not like the limelight.

"My uncle had the right idea," he said in the same story. "He believed you should get your name in the newspaper three times: when you're born, when you get married and when you die."

Tonya Sams contributed to this story.