The second Sports Business Classroom took place earlier this month in Las Vegas, attracting NBA front-office execs and TV personalities to instruct and educate people interested in landing entry-level jobs in the basketball industry. The program took place at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center to coincide with the Las Vegas NBA Summer League and was overseen by SBC GM Larry Coon, a UC-Irvine IT Manager and computer scientist who is a well-known figure in the industry as a salary cap and CBA expert. Coon said, “We are immersed and embedded in the Summer League, which is really one of the tremendous advantages (of SBC) because we can not only bring in league and team people and bring them over to teach, interact and network with the students, but the games are just a quick walk away.” SBC cost $3,000 this year, which included hotel accommodation, and Coon said that enrollment was capped this year at 66 people. There is no specific target audience that SBC is trying to reach, but Coon is focused on admitting a diverse range of students that can learn from one another. Among this year’s student body were college undergraduates, recent college graduates, ex-players and lawyers.
ORIGINS OF THE PROGRAM: Summer League co-Founder & Exec Dir Warren LeGarie, along with co-Founder & VP/Business Operations Albert Hall, launched the Front Office Combine program in ‘15. After a successful inaugural year, LeGarie and Hall brought in Coon, who rebranded the program last year. Over the last two years, SBC has organized itself similarly to how a university is run. “Having taught in the past in a university setting,” Coon said, “I’m really cognizant of the academics in the program, so I’m really focused on the teaching.” The four majors offered by SBC are TV/online/in-arena broadcast; social media/PR/digital branding; NBA salary cap; and scouting/video/analytics. Coon said each major has various level lecture courses, and this year’s program included more roundtables and exercises for students to “get their hands dirty” with specific topics. SBC includes classroom-type training from sports industry leaders, on-the-job training during the Summer League games and guest speakers. Among those who taught and spoke during the SBC this year include Rockets GM Daryl Morey, Spurs VP/Strategic Research Kirk Goldsberry, TNT’s David Aldridge, NFL Network and HBO’s Andrea Kremer and ESPN Dir of Sports Analytics Ben Alamar.
LET’S MAKE A DEAL: Coon mentioned one particular success this year was the mock trade deadline, where students were broken into small groups headed by a basketball expert and were tasked with providing analysis of a specific team’s options at the deadline. Coon: “I couldn’t use team personnel (as the experts) because they can’t talk about other teams or other players, so I used media people.” ESPN’s Zach Lowe, Kevin Pelton and Bobby Marks were among the “experts” used in the exercise. At the end, the groups had to provide an explanation of the team’s standing, their strategy and how to execute it so it makes sense from a financial, cap and basketball standpoint.
EXTRA CREDIT: In addition to the general SBC session, Coon also taught an executive session on the NBA salary cap open only to NBA/team personnel, agents and accredited media. Coon said, “The content is originally adapted from what I was teaching directly to teams. They are getting the same in-depth, hardcore information that’s going to help them in their jobs. Teams are recognizing that it behooves them for everybody in that organization, even the scouts and coaches, to have that knowledge of how the system works and be enriched in that way.”
