Blazer Freak
Superstar in the Making
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Here's the article: LINK
And this is the portion I was talking about:
Overall it was a great article on Olshey and really got me excited when he was still a prospect for the job.
And this is the portion I was talking about:
For Olshey, altering the league's collective opinion of the organization was the most important item on his to-do list, and the Cleveland trip was the opening act of that project. The meeting with James was vital to Olshey's long-term plan to change the way the top power brokers in basketball regarded the Clippers, particularly those at Creative Artists Agency, who had become extremely powerful in recent years as they've stockpiled many of the NBA's shiniest stars.
"What it accomplished from an education and relationship standpoint was to accelerate the learning curve for CAA about our organization and where we were trying to go," Olshey said.
"You kind of have to educate the marketplace a little bit about how we're not the Clippers and whatever perception you might have of the organization: 'The reality is this. These are the guys we've paid. These are the draft picks we've moved. These are the resources we have. This is the practice facility. This is our cap flexibility.'
"So what it did was it basically gave us an hour-and-a-half and the beginnings of a relationship with (agent) Leon Rose and CAA."
Olshey knew that the road to acquiring top talent in the NBA would go through CAA for the foreseeable future. CAA is a savvy, full-service agency that steers its clients to the most desirable employers. When it comes to its most marketable stars, CAA is not inclined to futz around with a franchise if it perceives that a player can't maximize his opportunity for success there. Olshey regarded getting the Clippers off the bad list and on the good list as vital to the health of the franchise, and that could happen only by being proactive.
"Do you really think that prior to Neil Olshey the Clippers would've had the balls to ask for an audience with LeBron James?" Vaccaro said. "Didn't that show the world something right there? We all knew [James] wasn't going there, but Neil did all he could, pulled all the puppet strings and he got the interview."
That was the signal Olshey wanted to transmit to players and agents, particularly Rose and his stable of stars: The Clippers could handle themselves at the NBA's adult table. Olshey wasn't a denialist. He knew the history of the franchise and, more important, he knew that you knew that he knew. But he felt deeply that there were assets to be pitched.
"[The meeting with James] was one of the first substantive interactions," Rose said. "The process helped the Clippers and they represented themselves well."
Overall it was a great article on Olshey and really got me excited when he was still a prospect for the job.
