Robert Kraft, now considered the gold standard for pro sports ownership, was a little beat up after transitioning from a relatively obscure billionaire to the high-profile world of NFL ownership.
“The visibility part of sports is critical,” Kraft told me in 2004. “You can’t understand that coming from other businesses. You need to get roughed up a little bit. You can’t read a book or train for it. It’s on-the-job, learning-curve experience.”
Tony Ressler is the new Hawks owner. Unless you subscribe to Forbes or collect trading cards of CEOs from private equity firms, you probably never heard of him before he purchased the Hawks. But he liked the shadows. Shadows can be comforting when they don’t preclude you from having a net worth of $1.54 billion, being married to a beautiful actress (Jami Gertz), having three children and doing pretty much anything you want.
Ressler’s visibility will increase now because sports plays out in daily public debates. But Ressler has no desire to be center stage.
The comfort for Hawks’ fans Thursday was not seeing nine owners fight over the microphone or the optimum photo angle at an introductory news conference (Atlanta Spirit flashbacks). The comfort was in hearing Ressler say in an exclusive wide-ranging interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “I don’t want to be an owner of a sports franchise where we step on the toes of people who know more than we do. That to me is always a recipe for disaster. I don’t look at me or any owner as being the face of the franchise. The players and the coach are the face of the franchise.”
Exhale.
Atlanta has seen its share of bad ownership situations, from corporate (Time Warner/AOL) to absentee (Liberty Media) to knucklehead central (Spirit). There’s no guarantee Ressler will flourish. But he spoke and acted in a way that suggests this regime won’t culminate in a collision of clown cars. That would be progress.
There will be “approximately 15” partners in the ownership group, Ressler said. Don’t worry. There’s only one decision maker.
Ressler will take input from all investors, but neatly summarized the voting process: “One voice, one decision.”
Can we put that on a T-shirt?
Former Spirit partner and impediment Michael Gearon Jr. will retain a minor share of the team, believed to be 1 percent. Ressler didn’t deny speculation that Gearon refused to completely divest himself and would not allow the sell to go through unless he kept a minor stake.
“I don’t know,” Ressler said when asked if Gearon’s inclusion was a mandate for the deal.
But he denied being concerned about the presence of Gearon or any other Spirit partner.
“What I felt was … every single owner wanted, and has committed to, lots of input, one voice and stable ownership,” Ressler said. “So I don’t even consider the issue of who owned (before) and how much people own (now) is that relevant.”
Which is fine, as long as Ressler and part-owner Grant Hill don’t follow in their predecessor’s pigeon-toed footsteps.
In short: Don’t mess up what the Hawks have going on. Don’t do what new owners so often do, which is believe their success in the business world translates in the world of sports. Hill played basketball at the highest levels, winning two national titles at Duke and playing 18 NBA seasons, including seven All-Star games. He knows what good and bad ownership looks like.
“You just have to be careful,” he said. “Just because you’ve had success in one industry doesn’t mean you know it all in another. This is a different animal. There’s a fine line between being actively engaged, which we plan on being, but not being too engaged, where you’re micromanaging. We have to figure out where that balance is.”
The first major decision, made before officially taking over, was not keeping Danny Ferry. “What we saw working was Bud-Wes-Steve,” said Ressler, referencing coach Mike Budenholzer, assistant general manager Wes Wilcox and CEO Steve Koonin. “That’s what we bought into.”
Also, it’s smart business not to inherit baggage.
His objective now: grow the business, support his basketball operations team and stay off stage, or as much as possible.
“I don’t consider myself a public figure and never have. I have a wife who’s an actress who appreciated the importance and the role of the press and has been in the public eye for 30 years or so. I don’t know if I’ll ever be comfortable with it.”
He doesn’t want to be the show. Comforting words.
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