Facebook has taken some hits recently for privacy issues, spamming, fake news and the like, but some of its tools, including, yes, birthdays, and memories, still hold great value to me. Especially memories, and this year has been quite a year of memories and milestones the last four months.
On this Friday, the last of the summer of 2018, I was again taking an early morning stroll through Facebook Memories and noticed that last year I had posted something marking 24 years to the day when we made the beginning of a trek to Philadelphia and started a new phase of life in the NBA with the Philadelphia 76ers, as Director of Public Relations. While I am usually not the great at math, I am smart enough to know that this Friday then, marks 25 years to the day when I walked through the doors and into the first floor offices at Veterans Stadium to start an interesting, fun three year run flying without a net below, in Philly.
As The Sixers begin an expanded era under new GM Elton Brand with great excitement for their media day today, it was worth a moment to take a look back at what we learned a quarter century ago in South Philly.
Call it the original, and somewhat forgotten, version of Trust The Process, with good reason.
That three year run really made the area our second home, a home I will return to this coming weekend for a bit when we drop our son Andrew off to start his sophomore year at Drexel, and it will have a special place much more because of the people and the places we experienced and embraced more than anything else (keeping in mind our record for the three years was 67-179 and we won 18 games the last year of The Spectrum before Larry Brown, and Allen Iverson came along to reverse the trend).
Still even for the relatively short time we spent there, the lessons learned from some very smart people were many.
A few:
The Working Circles of a Team: One of the first days in Philly, Jim Lynam, who was general manager then and remains one of the smartest minds in sports, took me aside and explained the roles, or circles, in the team dynamic. There is the inner circle, which of the players, a second circle where the coaches get pulled in, the third circle of basketball operations like scouts and front office, the fourth layer, which are staff who work directly with the players and staff and cross over into business, and a fifth layer which is the rest of the staff. Crossing inward into those circles for any period of time is not easy, and knowing which circle you reside on, and when and how to cross over and back out, is really key to team success. Everyone wants to be on the inside, but knowing and having a sense of where you fit is really really important.
Make Chicken Salad: When you work with a team it is very easy to get pulled into the emotional highs and lows with every passing day and result. Keeping a balance, knowing when to talk and when to not, and constantly looking to improve the overall experience in the office and with your mates from a personal level is really critical to success. It is very easy to get caught up in drama and politics. Staying above the fray, balancing egos, building consensus and being able to keep things moving forward with what you can directly control, is essential to being personally and professionally successful on any level.
It’s Not Your Team, But Work Like It Is: Unless you write the checks, you don’t own the team. However that doesn’t mean like you shouldn’t work like you have a stake in moving the business ahead. So many times you hear people say “it’s not my job” and they stay in silos, when really the best environments are collaborative. Now that doesn’t mean you don’t know your place and that you make sure your role is complete, but having a great working knowledge of all parts of a business, and asking questions about how the sausage gets made, is really key. We had one guy when I started at the Sixers who worked on the game operations side who always had some great ideas, but because he was ‘game ops’ few people ever listened to him. It was a waste of valuable talent. Everyone needs to contribute.
Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously All The Time: I think this comes with time, but we in sports and entertainment always assume that our tasks are the be all and end all and that the world is constantly focused on the minutia of the day. While it is hugely important to do all you do well, it’s also really important to have balance and realize what we do is important, but mistakes are usually correctable. Being the youngest at the time leading a communications team in the NBA, I had a huge issue with FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and always wanted to be everywhere and doing everything. It put tremendous pressure on myself and frankly, I cringe at some of the stupid things I did, such as yelling at a fellow employee who was trying to express an opinion on game night operations (one of my biggest regrets to this day, and I think about it every time I see him as he has risen to great heights with the team). I remember in the press room at the Sixers that first year, an assistant coach at St. Joseph’s University (where we practiced at the time) pulling me aside after watching me with such a serious act and saying to me;
“Man, this is basketball, why are you so uptight about it all the time, you need to relax. I’m only asking if I can watch the game from somewhere.”
It hit me really hard, that perception, and it too is something I think back on when the heat gets turned up a little too high from inside.
Control the Things You Can: In April of 1996, after I believed I was working really hard to improve the work environment and move the aspects of team business ahead going into Harold Katz’s sale of the team, I was fired. Plain and simple. Why? The new person in charge of business, Pat Croce, wanted to bring in his own people, and to start changing the culture, he chose me as first out the door. First, but not last. It seemed like the world was over for me at the time, but it wasn’t, and we moved on pretty quickly (easier to do when you are younger and have a great family and support group) and things worked out. The lesson learned is that sometimes, especially with management changes, there is little you can to do move the course of the river. You build, you learn, you do the best you can, and you control what you can control. You try really hard to fit in a changing situation, but some times the powers that be have a different vision. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t . Many times it is not personal unless you make it personal. It’s very easy to be bitter and disappointed, but you need to learn and move on. You take the blow, find the positives, you adjust and keep things going. Worrying about things you can’t control is neither healthy nor productive for anyone for the long term.
Enjoy the people and the moments: People, man we had a lot of them in our three years with the Sixers. One year we had 37 players, which to this day is still an NBA personnel record. We had a good number of coaches…an unheralded staff of the 18 win team included now Hall of Famer Maurice Cheeks, Warriors defensive guru Ron Adams and now Timberwolves head coach Tom Thibodeau…and front office staff who have gone on to amazing things, and those people remain friends and colleagues throughout the journey. This past week in Miami at the Sports Business International Conference I got to spend a few minutes with Lara Price, who is still with the organization and started there in my last season, and she reminded me that I helped convince her to take the Sixers job twentysomething years ago, which frankly I had forgotten. It’s really been special to have crossed paths with so many people who were part of the experience 25 years ago recently, and those core memories of where it started always come up and make this such a gratifying experience.
The moments, little ones like arriving at the first training camp at Franklin and Marshall College that fall, or leaving tickets for someone who just wanted to see a game, or big ones like closing The Spectrum or retiring Cheeks’ number 10 jersey, are all precious and are the positive baggage you take with you over time. Those mental snapshots travel with you, they get you through the tough times.
The Path Can Choose You Sometimes: Lots of people talk about having a plan and it’s always smart to have an idea of where things are going and how you can proactively shape your narrative. However the challenge of sport is that sometimes no matter what you do, the plan goes awry and you have to adjust. Hitting those curveballs is part of the dynamic, but also part of the fun. I honestly never wanted to leave my previous job to go to Philly; I was comfortable as Head of Media Relations at my alma mater, Fordham University. We had a house, had just gotten married, all was good. The opportunity to go came out of nowhere; it literally came from Brian McIntyre, Head of PR at the NBA, talking to my Fordham mate Mike Breen, and Brian seeing something about Fordham in the papers and passing my name on to the Sixers, and it developed from there. My wife Laura, and the AD at Fordham, Frank McLaughlin, convinced me we could do it. We figured out a way to commute in two different directions, Laura to NY me to Philly for a year, and we made it work. Every day was one of learning; there was no one to guide me, and I made more than my share of mistakes, but it was an experience that molded me personally and professionally and started to teach me how to adjust; a skill which I’m still learning today.
Find A Mentor: Another piece of advice you hear a lot, but it sometimes gets pooh poohed. Find someone in your life, in your field, who has been there that you can turn to, and who can be a counterbalance to what you are doing. I say this because I didn’t really have one when all this happened, and frankly especially at that age, I could have really used one to tell me what I should be doing more of. My one mentor, former NBC Sports PR head and industry legend, Mike Cohen, has passed away suddenly in 1988, and after that I never took time to identify anyone else, and no one really stepped up to offer help. Maybe it was my personality, maybe it was my style, I don’t really know. I had lots of people around to help, but I was leading a department at 28 with several young and inexperienced people around me, with nowhere to turn. There was no playbook for Communications to lean on. I didn’t realize it at the time but I sure could have used a senior voice around me. We just made it up along the way. Sometimes that was disruptive, fun and creative, sometimes it made us miss. Having a voice there to guide would have been great.
And having a mentor doesn’t mean just being a ventor. Complain and learn but don’t just use that person as someone to have along and spew negativity. He or she needs to be a while body of assistance, not just a shoulder to cry on.
Balance. If you love what you do, it’s easy to get consumed, and I remain very guilty of this. However find the time to balance. The pressure we put upon ourselves can be crushing, but knowing when to listen, to rest and seize a positive aspect of the everyday is so, so crucial specially as you get older.
Take Care Of Those Around You. Being young and aggressive I always sought to make my mark. While I tried make sure those who helped build the success that was not always the case then, although over time you certainly learn that you reap the benefits of sharing the wealth more than keeping it all for oneself. Doing the little things for others, having empathy, taking the time to learn about the people around you, sometimes gets lost in the 24/7 world we are in, but you learn, I think, that the ride is much more enjoyable with a happy bus of interesting campers than it is if you are driving that bus without the benefit of being able to look back. Now does that mean that you are out to all hours as you get older hanging with the interns? Nope. But it does mean that showing a little compassion, and some humanity, for all around you makes you a better person.
Do I still need to improve and learn? For sure. Am I better for having gone through the experiences and collecting the baggage over the years? Absolutely. The time at the Sixers was a great chapter of our lives, even if it was more of a shorter story than hoped. When I visited the beautiful practice facility a year ago it was great to catch up with the three employees who are still there from 25 years ago, Andy Speiser, Allen Lumpkin and Mary Purcell, and it’s even greater to cross paths with many of those people who were there in the trenches as employees or interns during that run in the bowels of the Vet.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
For us, Philadelphia remains “The City That Loves You Back.” The feeling was always mutual. The process worked.
