‘Seize the moment’ says Dallas Mavericks CEO

Terdema L. Ussery II urges taking risks and making the most of opportunities

By: Alex Gennis
   Taking risks and making the most of opportunities are the two keys to success in business, Terdema L. Ussery II, president and CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, said in a recent talk at Princeton University’s McCosh Hall.
   "If you take advantage of the opportunities that you have been given here, you can be confident that you can compete with anybody, anywhere," Mr. Ussery, a 1981 Princeton graduate and a university trustee, told the Princeton students.
   Mr. Ussery attributed his successful career to hard work and a willingness to start low to pursue his true career interests.
   "All you had to do was roll the ball out, tell me what the rules were, and I was going to compete. I was going to do well," Mr. Ussery said.
   Mr. Ussery was on his way to becoming a partner at Morrison and Foerster, a prominent law firm in Los Angeles, when he accepted an offer to help the struggling Continental Basketball Association for a much smaller salary than he was getting at the law firm.
   He later became the CBA commissioner, where he and a small group of young and motivated employees were able to pull the league back from the brink of bankruptcy and turn it around.
   "The moral of the story was that I took advantage of the opportunity — I seized the moment," Mr. Ussery said. "A league that was on the verge of collapse (became) a model of profitability."
   In 1997, Mr. Ussery became the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, where he again was able to turn around a struggling organization.
   "Ross Perot Jr. (the owner of the team at the time) told me, ‘I bought the team called the Dallas Mavericks, but I don’t know anything about basketball. Do you?’ To make the long story short, I came to Dallas," Mr. Ussery said.
   Mr. Ussery said the key to revitalizing a failing product is marketing a brand by getting people excited about it.
   "The Dallas Mavericks were a dormant brand." Mr. Ussery explained. "We were the losingest team in the ’90s. We were the worst."
   To turn the Mavericks around, he had to focus on giving consumers what they wanted, Mr. Ussery said.
   "You take a dormant brand and you start selling promises," Mr. Ussery said. "My job is to throw 45 fantastic parties a year for 20,000 people. I want the parties to be so good that when people leave the (Dallas) arena, all that is stuck in their minds is, ‘When will we party again with the Mavericks?’"
   Mr. Ussery emphasized customer service as a key component of the success of any enterprise.
   "We listened to our customers," he explained. "If a fan calls up and says, ‘My hotdog is cold,’ we get him two warm hotdogs. If he says, ‘My ice is hot,’ we get him a lot of cold ice."
   Under the leadership of Mr. Ussery, the Mavericks went from being the worst among all professional U.S. sports teams to one of the best teams in the NBA.
   In emphasizing the business aspect of professional sports, Mr. Ussery expressed his support for a recently enacted, controversial NBA dress code that requires all players to wear business casual attire while engaged in team activities.
   "You have to come to the arena dressed in a fashion that says that you are ready to work in exchange for $15 million," said Mr. Ussery. "(The players) don’t have an inherent, inalienable right to be in the business."
   He said the measure would prevent some basketball fans from being turned away from the game by the appearance and lifestyles of some athletes.
   As a businessman who was named the 21st most influential minority in sports by Sports Illustrated and the 2003 "Corporate Executive of the Year" by Black Enterprise magazine, Mr. Ussery had advice to give to Princeton’s aspiring entrepreneurs. Above all, he underscored flexibility and the willingness to start small.
   "Don’t come to me and tell me that because you can walk on water, you need to be making $50,000 a year or $100,000 a year," he explained.
   "I won’t hire specialists because I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had the luxury of abundant resources," he said. "I want people who can cross-pollinate. You may be asked to do all kinds of things and you must have the confidence and the ability to stretch."