It was December 2009 when NBA agent Roger Montgomery decided he would make a real effort to sign a player he’d just seen playing for Harvard against basketball powerhouse Connecticut.

That player (no longer anonymous to sports fans): Jeremy Lin.

“He had 30 points in that game, but the thing that caught my eye was his tenacity,” said Montgomery, owner of his own company, San Antonio-based Montgomery Sports Group. “I liked his size and I liked his athleticism and I liked his decision-making. I felt he made good decisions on the basketball floor. … All the things we are seeing him do right now.”

NBAE / GETTY IMAGES

When you are a sports agent running your own small shop, you can’t take a lot of chances on players and be wrong. Montgomery has been an agent for 11 years, and while he has represented other NBA players in the past, he has only two players in the league right now: Lin and Washington Wizards guard/forward Maurice Evans.

At the time Montgomery recruited Lin out of Harvard, signing him in April 2010, there were about six or seven other agents trying to sign Lin, Montgomery said. Not many of those competitors were well-known agents, Montgomery said, although he said he knew that former agent Lon Babby, now president of basketball operations for the Phoenix Suns, was interested. Babby did not return a phone call.

Montgomery says he always knew Lin had what it takes to make it in the NBA, even as he was passed over in the 2010 draft. Lin

Before Jeremy Lin broke through in the NBA, his agent saw his potential at Harvard. Photo by: AP IMAGES

ultimately signed with Golden State and played with the Warriors through 2010-11 before they waived him ahead of the start of this season. He was signed and released by Houston in December before signing with New York — for whom, through last Tuesday, he’d posted a two-week run of scoring 20-plus points in six straight games, all Knicks wins, bringing a flurry of attention to himself and to the Knicks.

Montgomery said Lin was simply overlooked. “I think it was his image,” he said. “You don’t find many Asian-American players. I think if you want to be truthful … it’s because he went to Harvard. That is not a basketball powerhouse. I mean, Harvard is not Kansas.”

Now, of course, everyone is knocking on Lin’s door, but Montgomery was mum as of early last week when asked about future marketing plans for Lin. “We are in discussions on what we are planning to do and we are excited, [but] I don’t want to share what we are going to do … because everyone is positioning themselves.”

Whenever a player with an agent who has a small client base becomes a star, there’s the chance a bigger agency could lure the player away. Montgomery says he is not worried about the possibility.

“People are always trying to steal players from other agents in the NBA. It is not something I am concerned about,” he said. He said his relationship with Lin is based, in part, on Lin being the underdog player and Montgomery being the underdog agent. They spent a lot of time talking about how Lin would make it if just given the right chance.
“We had discussions where we thought we were close,” Montgomery said. “We always talked about, ‘Breaking the door down. Breaking the door down. Breaking the door down.’”

NFL PROSPECTS SIGN: Impact Sports signed Nebraska linebacker Lavonte David for representation in this year’s NFL draft. Impact also signed Miami wide receiver Travis Benjamin, North Carolina linebacker Zach Brown, Georgia tight end Orson Charles, Virginia Tech cornerback Jayron Hosley and Alabama wide receiver Marquis Maze. Impact agents Mitch Frankel, Sean Kiernan and Tony Fleming will represent the players. … Sun West Sports founder and veteran NFL agent Frank Bauer signed Stanford tight end Coby Fleener for representation.

Liz Mullen can be reached at lmullen@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @SBJLizMullen.

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Wasserman Media Group MLB agents are embroiled in two separate, confidential arbitrations with former client Francisco Rodriguez over his trade last summer from the New York Mets to Milwaukee, a club he had on a no-trade list that was never filed.

Rick Johnson, Rodriguez’s attorney, said not filing the list of 10 teams with the Mets cost Rodriguez millions in earnings, in part because his role in Milwaukee is that of a setup reliever rather than a closer. Johnson also contends that Wasserman attorneys reneged on an agreement to make an offer of at least $1 million to settle any legal claims Rodriguez might have against the agency and his former agents, Paul Kinzer and Arn Tellem. No such lawsuit had been filed as of last Thursday, Johnson said.

Francisco Rodriguez was traded in July to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he became a setup man. Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

An attorney for Wasserman contends that Rodriguez was not upset with the trade and is only bringing up the no-trade list now because he owes fees to the agency. “The no trade list is a red herring: Both the player and his agent were satisfied with the Brewers trade, and the player just signed a new contract with the Brewers,” Wasserman outside attorney Bert Deixler said via email. “Now, at the same time we are trying to collect fees that the player still owes, the list has suddenly become an issue. This fee collection matter is itself now the subject of a confidential arbitration.”

Rodriguez last year had a player’s option in his contract with the Mets, a deal negotiated by Kinzer, that called for him to be paid $17.5 million in 2012 if he finished 55 games in the 2011 season. On July 12, Rodriguez was traded to the Brewers. He had finished 34 games at that time, putting him on pace, according to Johnson, to hit the incentive mark.

Earlier that summer, Johnson said, Kinzer had approached Rodriguez and told him that he should renegotiate with the Mets and agree to take a one-year deal for 2012 for $9 million, letting go of the $17.5 million option. Rodriguez, thinking he was on pace to hit the 55-finish incentive — and not knowing the no-trade list had not been filed — said no.

“They [Wasserman Media Group] told him the Mets wanted to trade him, but they didn’t tell him that he had no ability to block the trade because they had not filed the no-trade list,” Johnson said.

“We were told that there was not a valid, approved no-trade list,” said Brewers general manager Doug Melvin via email last week. “Without knowing K-Rod we felt that he would be understanding of why we traded for him [to win] and he is such a competitor and wants to win that he was coming to a club that had a chance to go to the playoffs.”

Working as a setup man in Milwaukee, where John Axford is the established closer, Rodriguez’s pace to hit the 55-games-finished incentive would be altered.

Rodriguez fired Tellem and Kinzer and hired Scott Boras just ahead of the trade. Under the old deal, the Mets would have had to pay Rodriguez $3.5 million had he not reached the 55-game mark. Boras negotiated an additional $500,000 for Rodriguez from the Brewers.

Rodriguez subsequently agreed, in January, to a one-year, $8 million deal to return to the Brewers in 2012, avoiding arbitration.

Said Melvin of Rodriguez via email, “He and his agent accepted a restructuring of the vesting option for $500,000 so he could be a free agent at the end of the year. So I assume he was okay. With all of that, he would like to be a closer and I totally understand that.”

The $4 million, plus the $8 million salary that Rodriguez agreed to this year, is $5.5 million less than the $17.5 million Rodriguez would have earned had he stayed in New York, where he was the closer — which he presumably could have done had the no-trade list been filed. Johnson is seeking that $5.5 million in damages, plus additional damages because Rodriguez is not playing as a closer and is playing in a smaller market, Milwaukee, instead of in New York.

The MLB Players Association oversees fee disputes between players and agents. MLBPA Executive Director Michael Weiner declined to comment.

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