Sports Executive Dave Checketts on Ambition, Passion and 'Difficult People'

From Knowledge@Wharton:

Longtime sports executive Dave Checketts, chairman of New York-based sports ownership group SCP Worldwide, works in “a world of difficult people,” and he wanted the audience for his recent Wharton Leadership Lecture to know that difficult people are not limited to the world of balls, bats and baskets. “If you’re going to go into this industry or any industry as a leader, you have to be prepared to deal with difficult people.”

Among the war stories he shared to prove his point was a behind-the-scenes tale of a tense encounter he had at Madison Square Garden in July 1996. This run-in did not involve an athlete or coach; instead it put Checketts nose-to-nose with New York’s mayor at the time — the hard-charging Rudy Giuliani.

Checketts was president and CEO of Madison Square Garden LP, then a $4 billion enterprise that included the Garden arena, the New York Knicks basketball team, the New York Rangers hockey team and the MSG television network. He was in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the NBA free agent season, walking into a midnight meeting with the agent for guard Allan Houston, when his assistant telephoned with urgent news. There had been a brawl at a boxing match that night in the Garden. It had spread from the ring into the crowd, and it looked as if 14 people were killed. Checketts immediately flew back to New York, fearing the worst, not least for the future of his company. He learned that Giuliani was on his way to the Garden. “My PR guy said, ‘We are dead,’” Checketts recalled.

In fact, no one had been killed, but there were injuries and robberies. The terrifying melee had been televised live on HBO. At 1:30 a.m., on a ramp inside the arena, Checketts saw the mayor approaching him with the police and fire commissioners — and the media in pursuit. “Dave, we’ve got a problem,” Giuliani said. Checketts recalled “thinking that this is either the end of my career, or something productive is going to come out of this.”

Giuliani told Checketts he planned to tell the media that the MSG security staff had acted badly. Imagining the next day’s reports — saying the Garden was unsafe — Checketts didn’t back down. “I said, ‘Rudy, if you say that our security acted badly, I’m going to say that the [police] acted badly.’”

Giuliani parried: “Well, then, I’ll say your security acted slowly.”

Checketts: “Well, then, I’ll say that your police didn’t react at all.”

At that point, Checketts recalled, Giuliani did “what difficult people do: He came right up about four inches from my face and said, ‘Do you want to battle with me?’”

Checketts said no. But he refused to let the mayor ruin the company’s reputation. After all, there had not been an investigation into the causes of the brawl. The two men adjourned to a side room and argued for an hour. By 2:30 a.m., he said, “We walked out, joined at the arm basically, and said, ‘This is outrageous. There’s no room for it in New York or anywhere else. There will be an investigation.’ And we announced steps to make sure it never happens again.” The damage was minimized.

Checketts, 52, said it took him years to master the art of the confrontation. He had plenty of practice in New York. Toward the end of the 1998-99 season, for example, Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy and general manager Ernie Grunfeld were sniping, and James Dolan of Cablevision, which owned the team, instructed Checketts to fire one of them. He reluctantly sacked Grunfeld, his friend, because he felt the players were more loyal to the coach.

Such “who’s in charge?” power struggles can undermine any organization, he said. They affect employee morale and ultimately the product — which in sports, perhaps more than other businesses, is a quick way to lose customers.

Checketts became a sports business superstar early, but he hadn’t planned to. Born in Utah, he graduated from the University of Utah, served as a Mormon missionary and earned his MBA at Brigham Young University. He went straight from there in 1981 to consulting firm Bain. “For three years in Boston, I was trying to find a way to save the Firestone Tire Company,” he said. “We fired 27,000 people and closed seven plants. I was working around the clock…. That was great experience for me when I took over the Utah Jazz, which was almost in bankruptcy. I understood what to do.” (cont.)

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Sports Executive Dave Checketts on Ambition, Passion and 'Difficult People'

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