Editor’s Note: This story about the founding of the Dallas Mavericks originally ran in the June 1980 issue of D Magazine, but, because we didn’t have a hard copy of that issue many years ago when we created our digital archive, it was never uploaded to our website. As a ceremony approached, on January 28, to honor Norm Sonju’s contributions to the franchise, his son Scott reached out to us with PDFs of the missing story. We are in his debt.
The house was quiet at 2 a.m. Norm Sonju sat at his desk in the upstairs office of his home in far North Dallas. From this remote and private outpost, Sonju had conducted his isolated efforts to bring a professional basketball team to Dallas. And now, after months of work, the sweet results were so close he could taste them. The next morning, February 3, 1980, he would get on a plane to Washington, D.C., where the board of governors of the National Basketball Association was gathered for a summit meeting. The major item on the agenda would be a vote to award a new basketball franchise in the city of Dallas.
Sonju had done all a man could do. There on his desk he had all the numbers, all the dollars, all the promises. All that was left was for the NBA to make it official. He rubbed his tired eyes. He would add a few finishing touches to the package, get a few hours sleep, then fly to Washington for the big event. He was so close.
The phone rang, startling him. It was Michael Gearon, president of the Atlanta Hawks, one of hundreds of NBA officials he had talked to in his long pursuit of a team. “Norm,” said Gearon, “we’re having some trouble here.” There was concern in Gearon’s voice. Sonju braced. “The vote on this thing is really torn.” There was silence as Sonju tried to fend off shock.
“Wait a minute, Mike, wait a minute. What are you trying to tell me? Are you trying to tell me that after all this, after all this, the whole thing may fall through tomorrow?”
“Well, Norm ….”
If he hadn’t been so tired, he might have screamed. Or thrown something. Or cried.
It was just too much. It was unbelievable. If someone had been there to ask him how he felt, he would have been too stunned to answer. If someone had asked him then, “Is basketball really worth it, Norm?” he would have been hard pressed to answer. Because, in spite of his lifelong love for the game, Norm Sonju’s basketball career had never been much to cheer about.
It was illogical from the beginning that basketball should have been Norm Sonju’s game. It should have been baseball. He grew up in the Forties in Chicago in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in the shadow of Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. Norm loved the Cubs and he loved baseball, but you couldn’t play baseball in the alleys. Basketball was the game of the streets and Norm was good at it, a natural. In fifth grade he played on the eighth-grade team and by high school he was a starting guard at Carl Schurz High, renowned in Chicago for its athletic teams.
Sonju was good, but the college coaches weren’t beating his door down. And when he decided to attend Grinnell, a small rural college in Iowa, he wasn’t doing his basketball career any favors. Six-foot-three and fast, he was a decent player, but at Grinnell nobody paid much attention; he became as proficient at playing his trumpet as he was at playing guard. Besides, he never had what he’d call a “burning desire” to play basketball for a living. Especially after he injured his leg and missed the last half of his senior season.
After college, though, he joined the Air Force and played on the service team; his skills, to his surprise, began to blossom. Pro ball was suddenly a real option. He worked at the game, studied it, earned a few pro tryouts, and was entertaining a few offers. Then, in 1964, on a Michigan highway, a drunken driver jumped three lanes, hit Sonju’s car head-on, and ended his playing hopes for good.
A crushed chest, a smashed face, a busted knee, an injured back, and the loss of 60 pounds during a long recuperation convinced Sonju that basketball was out. He enrolled at the University of Chicago and two years later graduated with an MBA in marketing. He settled into business in Downers Grove, Illinois, a Chicago suburb that he would call home for the next 10 years. But he couldn’t get basketball out of his system entirely. Through a long-standing association with a summer resort in the Adirondacks, Sonju had established a basketball camp, which he staffed with NBA players and coaches. Through those contacts Sonju stayed close to the pro grapevine, and counted among his friends people like Pat Williams (now general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers), Don Nelson (now coach of the Milwaukee Bucks), and Jerry Colangelo (now general manager of the Phoenix Suns). It was also through the summer camp that he met Carole Thiesen, whom he married in 1967.
Sonju also managed to keep his own court sense polished after his neighbor, dean of a small YMCA school in Downers Grove called George Williams College, convinced Sonju to become coach of the school’s Division III basketball team. Sonju served on a part-time basis, with a full-time assistant, and in his second year won 18 games. But basketball was only a hobby; his profession was marketing. By 1976 he was a high-salaried executive with Servicemasters Industries, a $300 million corporation. Norm Sonju didn’t have a thought in the world about professional basketball.
John Y. Brown, a charming, brilliant, mildly eccentric Kentucky boy, had made himself a tidy fortune by marketing a fat old gentleman named Colonel Sanders and a so-called “secret recipe” into the phenomenon known as Kentucky Fried Chicken. But Kentucky being more famous for its basketball than its poultry, John Y. took some of his earnings and bought himself a toy, a professional basketball team he called the Kentucky Colonels. The Colonels played in the American Basketball Association (ABA), an upstart operation founded in 1967 that managed to muscle its way into the traditional territory of the old, established NBA, finally forcing a merger with the old league in 1976. With the merger, Brown’s Colonels were disbanded, and John Y. went looking for a new playground. He found it in Buffalo, where he bought half interest in the Buffalo Braves of the NBA, using, in part, money paid him by the four ABA merger teams as recompense for folding the Colonels.
In his first week in Buffalo, new general manager Norm Sonju received over 300 hate letters. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he’d walked headlong into an NBA hornet’s nest.
Upon acquiring the Braves in 1976, John Y. Brown set out in search of a general manager. While still owner of the Colonels, Brown had met Sonju, recommended to him by Jerry Colangelo, then the young general manager of the Chicago Bulls. Brown had been impressed, but couldn’t woo Sonju from the business world. Now, though, he gave him the hard sell. Brown was prepared to buy out the other half ownership of the Braves (from co-owner Paul Snyder); but only, he told Sonju, if Sonju would join him as G.M. He offered attractive financial terms to spice the deal.
Brown’s offer was a bolt out of the blue. For Norm Sonju, it couldn’t have been a worse time to consider jumping professional tracks and casting his fate with basketball. His wife, Carole, was pregnant with their third child. He was scheduled to enter the hospital for knee surgery. His father had cancer and was not expected to live much longer. Sonju was in the midst of building a large new home with a separate apartment for his mother. And he had just experienced a record-breaking year with Servicemaster, leading to organizational changes which would drastically reduce his heavy travel load. His head told him that basketball was a crazy idea. But his heart was still in the game.
He told Carole that he had been approached about a job in pro basketball, but not to worry. It likely wouldn’t amount to anything. He gave her no specifics. “What cities have teams?” she asked. He wrote down a list of cities. The first one she crossed off was Buffalo. That should have told him something.
But John Y. Brown was not a man to take no for an answer. Before Norm had made his decision, Brown flew to Chicago, visited the Sonju home, took Carole aside to the kitchen, and sat down with her over a cup of coffee. When Carole emerged from the kitchen she said, “Norm, I think you ought to take the Buffalo job.”
In his first week in Buffalo, new general manager Norm Sonju received over 300 hate letters. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he’d walked headlong into an NBA hornet’s nest. Buffalo was not happy with its Braves or with John Y. Brown. Or, now, with Norm Sonju.
In the three seasons before John Y. Brown bought the Braves, the team had shown steady improvement, sporting winning records and reaching the all-important playoffs each year. But from the beginning of Brown’s reign, performance fell off: The Braves ended the 1976-77 season with a 30-52 record, 20 games out of first place, and out of the playoffs entirely. Meanwhile, prior to Sonju’s arrival, Brown had made some serious public relations blunders. From the outset Brown spoke of cutting the payroll and backed it up by trading away the Braves’ star, Bob McAdoo (the league’s top scorer the three previous seasons) and a budding star named Moses Malone (later to become the league’s Most Valuable Player with the Houston Rockets). Four other front-line players were traded for cash. The previous ownership had made strong overtures about moving the Braves out of Buffalo and taking the whole franchise to Miami. More than overtures, in fact. They’d signed an arena lease in Miami and were ready to go, until a young Buffalo attorney slapped an injunction on the Braves preventing their exodus.
Enter Norm Sonju. Hired by John Y. Brown, he was perceived immediately by the fans and press as the enemy, the man who would help steal the Braves away. To this day Norm Sonju says Buffalo read him all wrong; his job was simply to make a successful franchise of the Braves—in Buffalo. The task was clear: The Braves’ arena lease stipulated that if the team sold 4,500 season tickets, it was bound to play under the lease; if 4,500 season tickets could not be sold, the Braves were free to move. Sonju’s goal was to sell the 4,500 tickets for the 1977-78 season. That would silence skeptics and affirm his commitment to Buffalo.
Sonju set to work. He got his family happily settled in a new home, then hit the streets. He made some 200 speeches and presentations in the Buffalo community, trying to rebuild some support for the Braves. But every so often he would pick up his morning paper and read an AP wire story out of Louisville in which John Y. Brown would be quoted as saying he sure would like to have the team in Kentucky. And Sonju’s phone would start ringing. The fans didn’t buy Sonju’s pitch, or his season tickets. By the October lease deadline, a meager 2,700 had been sold. The Braves would play the ’77-’78 season in Buffalo, but they weren’t obliged to stay after that.
But Sonju wasn’t through. He was still determined to squeeze some kind of success out of the lame duck team. The Braves acquired Nate “Tiny” Archibald, a high scoring point guard; Archibald would be the key to their offense. Forty-eight hours before the first game of the season, in an exhibition against Detroit, Archibald went in for a twisting layup, landed badly on one ankle, and snapped his Achilles tendon. Out for the season. The Braves never recovered, stumbling to a dismal 27-55 season.
Even the weather conspired against Sonju. For the second year in a row, Buffalo was blasted by the most brutal winter on record: 180 inches of snow in a city that normally averaged 80. As he slid and skidded to work each morning, Sonju was apprised by his car radio of the myriad school and factory closings. And here he was trying to get people to come out to watch basketball. Three games were cancelled by blizzards.
Still, Sonju tried. He arranged a Telethon promotion by which local high school athletic programs would be the beneficiaries of ticket sales. Sonju asked for the schools’ support and hoped to sell 2,000 tickets. He sold 200. He arranged a big post-game concert promotion starring Tammy Wynette and drew a big crowd. The Braves played miserably and the press ripped Sonju apart: “He ought to spend more money on his team and less on his sideshows.”
But there was one last hope to save the team. In December, a group of Buffalo businessmen, key leaders in the community, came to Sonju with a proposal: If we sell 2,000 more season tickets for the remainder of the season, will John Y. Brown promise to keep the Braves in Buffalo? Sonju asked Brown; Brown said yes. A massive 30-day blitz began, with the Buffalo bigwigs knocking on doors and holding out their hats. All they needed was 2,000 season tickets to save the Braves. They sold less than 100.
Sonju had to face the realities; basketball in Buffalo was doomed. As the Braves wound up their pathetic season, Sonju commissioned a Washington marketing consultant to survey the nation’s available basketball marketplaces. With the Braves’ failure in Buffalo, the franchise was now a hot commodity in the eyes of several cities starving for basketball. Sonju wanted to be ready with the facts when John Y. Brown (and new part-owner Harry Mangurian) got serious about shopping for a new home. He looked at St. Louis, Minneapolis, Toronto, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Miami, even Louisville. But every time Sonju sat down with the studies and stats and surveys, the name that kept jumping out of the numbers was Dallas.
As far as Sonju could see, the only problem with Dallas was the lack of a suitable arena; everything else, particularly the massive radio-TV market, was strong. However, it wasn’t Sonju’s decision. They were still the Buffalo Braves. Meanwhile, a Buffalo reporter came to interview him. “What are the best open markets for basketball?” the writer queried. And then challenged, “There’s no market that’s going to be better than Buffalo.”
“Are you kidding?” Sonju retorted.
“Dallas would be a great market. So would Minneapolis or Toronto.” The next morning the headline screamed, “Sonju wants to go to Dallas.” Sonju was irritated; the story was premature, overblown, and now the cat was out of the bag. And there were still two months of the season left to play. Dallas had to be downplayed.
But that didn’t prevent Sonju from placing a long-distance phone call to Dallas Mayor Bob Folsom in April.
Robert Folsom was a basketball fan long before he was a politician. In the late Sixties, he had been involved in the ownership of Dallas’ first professional basketball team, the ill-fated Dallas Chaparrals of the ABA. The Chaps, playing out of the Convention Center arena, were never a high-quality ball club and they never won the hearts of Dallas fans. Dismal won-lost records and equally dismal attendance prompted the Chaparrals to pack up and head down 1-35 to San Antonio in 1973, where they became the Spurs and later joined the NBA with the merger of the two leagues.
Many would say the failure of the Chaparrals long stigmatized Dallas as a professional basketball market. But Bob Folsom remained convinced that an NBA team could not only survive but thrive here. And when he became mayor of the city, the securing of a basketball team and the building of a suitable sports palace to house it became a kind of personal political pursuit.
Sonju was so committed to Dallas, and so sure Dallas would be it, that he bought a home, leased office space, and nicknamed the team the “Dallas Express.”
The roots of Reunion Arena stretched back before Folsom’s mayoral reign. Studies for a sports arena had been done by the City Council and consulting firms as early as 1972. In October of 1973, Hunt Investment Corporation announced its massive Reunion project; included was a site provision for a sports arena or performing arts complex. Through a series of small land parcel trades between the city and Woodbine Development Corp. (a division of Hunt Investments), the city ended up with ownership of a four-acre site suitable for the arena.
Cost studies, feasibility studies, and architectural studies were completed in 1977; the question that remained for Folsom and the city staff was financing. It was determined that a revenue bond program, in conjunction with refinancing existing revenue bonds for the Convention Center, would amount to a $52 million package, with $25 million earmarked for the sports arena. That would fill the bill; it also eliminated the need for a tax bond program, a public approval vote, and taxpayer financing. In November of 1977, the bonds were approved by the City Council and sold. On March 15, 1978, groundbreaking ceremonies were held. Bob Folsom had his sports arena. Now all he needed was a basketball team to play in it.
When Bob Folsom answered his phone, that day in April 1978, Norm Sonju was pleased to find that he didn’t have to introduce himself. He learned very quickly that Bob Folsom was a basketball man. Quickly, and very quietly, Sonju hopped a plane to Dallas to meet Folsom face-to-face. He found the mayor to be everything he could have hoped—as hungry for Dallas basketball as Sonju was to deliver it. The city itself was not new to him; Sonju had visited Dallas many times during his business years and had always liked it.
A few weeks later, John Y. Brown was flown in to meet Folsom and survey the situation. (Harry Mangurian, the other half-owner of the Braves, who lived in Fort Lauderdale and had initially been partial to a move to Florida, had already been convinced by Sonju that Dallas was the place to go.) Escorted by Folsom on a limousine tour of the city, Brown was impressed, but not convinced; the weight was on his shoulders, and he wasn’t ready to commit. By now the press had picked up the story and speculation ran rampant.
In late May, Folsom flew in secret to Fort Lauderdale and began conducting serious negotiations with Mangurian and Sonju. All were convinced that Brown would come around; he would see, as Sonju did, that there was no logic in going anywhere but Dallas. In fact, when a representative of San Diego called Sonju to take a proposal in early June, Sonju told him not to bother—it would only confuse the issue. Sonju was so committed to Dallas, and so sure Dallas would be it, that he bought a home, leased office space, negotiated a 20-year arena lease (with quarters in the Convention Center until Reunion was completed) and nicknamed the team the “Dallas Express.”
Sonju was pointing toward the NBA league meeting in San Diego on June 13 and 14. Then the board of governors would be pitched on a franchise relocation and would be asked for their approval. Sonju was ready to pitch Dallas. He had prepared an impressive flip-chart, full of graphs and art, to wow the governors. A few days before the San Diego meetings, Sonju flew back into Dallas, checked into the Hyatt under an assumed name, and hammered out final negotiations with City Manager George Schrader and his assistant, Gerry Henigsman. On June 12, John Y. Brown flew into town. He was photographed for the newspapers with Folsom and Sonju, looking proudly into the excavation hole where Reunion Arena would be raised; he went out to play some golf with the mayor. Everything looked rosy. Sonju was thrilled.
That evening, Brown and Sonju headed for DFW Airport to embark for San Diego. To Sonju’s shock, they were met at DFW by a San Diego contingent ready to fly with them to the coast, including the mayor, the head of the San Diego sports arena, and San Diego resident Alex Graza, a basketball legend and friend of John Y. Brown’s. Sonju was horrified by the implications. He decided to stay in Dallas and caught another plane the next day.
Upon his arrival in San Diego, the newspaper headlines blared, “Braves coming to San Diego.” The subheads read, “Sonju opposed; prefers Dallas.” He was already the villain. As he walked to his hotel, carrying an attache case filled with his Dallas presentation, he was met by an NBA governor who said to him, “Norm, I hope whatever you do you’re not going to make a pitch for Dallas, because you don’t have a chance for that.” Meanwhile, a group of governors had sequestered John Y. Brown in a hotel room and told him, “You’d better not ask for Dallas.”
A few hours later, Sonju stood at the end of a conference table facing the NBA advisory board as John Y. Brown introduced him. It was painfully apparent that Dallas was not what they wanted to hear. It had become obvious that the governors had earmarked the prime Dallas market for expansion, for a bright and shiny new team, not for a vagabond franchise like the Braves. Sonju never turned over one page of his flip chart.
John Y. Brown was granted a 30-day extension by the governors to continue his research. Perhaps, thought Sonju, there was still a chance. That chance lasted until the next day. Sonju and Brown were playing tennis when John Y. yelled over the net, “Hey, Norm, how’d you like to be president and general manager of the Boston Celtics?” Sonju was incredulous.
It was true, or almost true. Brown had suddenly struck up negotiations with Irv Levin, owner of the Celtics. Levin, who lived in Los Angeles, wanted a team closer to home. Brown was his ticket. In July, the two cut a deal whereby John Y. Brown and Harry Mangurian bought the Celtics and Irv Levin bought the Buffalo Braves—and moved them to San Diego. It was, in effect, an unprecedented franchise swap. Dallas was left out in the cold.
In the ensuing months, a somewhat bewildered and very disappointed Norm Sonju bounced between franchises. He first went to San Diego to help the ex-Braves franchise set up shop for Levin. When Levin chose not to retain any of Sonju’s Buffalo staff, Sonju returned to Buffalo to fold the tent and help his former staff find new jobs. He suffered one final indignity when a cable TV company cranked up an absurd lawsuit over an expired contract and slapped a temporary restraining order on the Braves, in effect preventing them from selling or moving their furniture or shipping records or equipment to Boston or San Diego. Team attorneys finally cleared it up; Sonju packed up the whole show in a week and said goodbye to Buffalo.
He remained on John Y. Brown’s payroll, now as an employee of the Celtics. But when it was decided that Red Auerbach would remain with the Celtics as general manager, Norm Sonju began to look elsewhere. He considered strongly a return to the business world and weighed his options in the commodities and investment market. But basketball still had him in its grip. Not surprisingly, his eyes turned back to Dallas.
When word hit the local papers in January of 1979 that a Dallas millionaire by the name of Donald J. Carter had mailed a franchise application and a $100,000 check to the NBA, the general reaction was “Who?” Donald Carter was described as the executive vice president of Home Interiors and Gifts. “What?” And now he was announcing his intention to secure an NBA franchise for Dallas. “Him?”
Before Don Carter mailed his hundred grand to the NBA, the closest he’d ever come to being a sports magnate was selling peanuts at Texas-OU games in the Forties. The closest he’d ever come to basketball was watching his son Ronnie shoot hoops for the Coppell High School Cowboys. His most impressive sports holding to date was season tickets at Texas Stadium. Who was this guy?
Don Carter would be called a self-made millionaire except that he works for his mother. Back in 1957, he, his mother (Mary Crowley), and a group of 15 other relatives and friends ·pooled their life savings and started a little company selling knick-knacks for the home—porcelain figurines, flowerpots, candleholders. They knew how to sell. In 1962, they broke a million dollars in gross sales; today they often sell a million dollars’ worth of knick-knacks (now called decorative accessories and coordinated groupings) in a single day. Home Interiors and Gifts boasts annual sales in excess of $200 million. Its products are sold by some 30,000 sales representatives, almost all women, in 49 states. It’s the sixth-largest direct sales operation in the country, much in the Tupperware or Mary Kay Cosmetics tradition. And it’s all orchestrated in Dallas by President Mary Crowley and her son, Donald J. Carter.
It was more than an irrational passion; Sonju knew that if his marketing mind was right, Dallas was an NBA goldmine.
A large section of the First Baptist Church complex in downtown Dallas is occupied by a structure called the Mary C. Building. The “C” stands for Crowley. The family’s religious ties are strong, almost evangelistic. And in a sense it could be said that Christianity led Donald Carter into basketball. Carter has close ties to a group called Athletes in Action (AIA), which supports a talented traveling basketball team of Christian athletes. In the fall of 1978, a group of West Coast AIA people were in Dallas and approached Carter with several ideas. One of them had to do with a professional basketball team for Dallas. He’d never considered such a thing before, but it had appeal, primarily as a business opportunity, but also as a bit of fun for his family. “Family” is the key word in Don Carter’s vocabulary. And the Carter family is a sporting one. Each of his three children is a high school athlete, including his daughter, Christi, who plays on the girls’ basketball team. His wife, Linda Jo (nicknamed “Butch”), was a high school basketball player; for many years the only picture of “Butch” that Don Carter carried in his wallet was a snapshot of her standing in uniform with a basketball under her arm. The family, thought Carter, might get a kick out of owning a basketball team.
Carter’s closest associate is his attorney, Doug Adkins, who is also “family.” (Adkins’ father-in-law was the original attorney for the family business and a close family friend.) Adkins began to research the possibilities, brought in some marketing consultants, and, with Carter, talked to a few NBA clubs about moving to Dallas. When an expansion team became a more likely route, Carter wrote his $100,000 check (a kind of earnest-money requirement by the NBA) and attached it to a franchise application, “Just to be the first in line, in case anything happened.”
In the course of their research, Carter and Adkins kept hearing the same name over and over again: Norm Sonju. Sonju had many ties in Christian athletics and, for Carter, such endorsements were strong. No less a reference than Dr. W.A. Criswell, Carter’s friend and pastor at First Baptist Church, had put in a good word for Sonju, based on a meeting during the Buffalo debacle. “Let’s get in touch with this fellow,” Carter said to Adkins. In February of 1979, Adkins placed a phone call to Norm Sonju.
In the week before Adkins’ call, John Y. Brown had sold his interest in the Boston Celtics to Harry Mangurian in order to begin his later successful campaign for governor of Kentucky; Sonju had officially severed his ties with the Celtics. He had already done more exploring in the Dallas market in the continued hope of bringing Dallas and basketball together. It was more than an irrational passion; Sonju knew that if his marketing mind was right, Dallas was an NBA goldmine. Somebody would get it eventually and Sonju figured he ought to be in on it. But he needed financial backing and, as yet, he hadn’t been able to find it.
Sonju and Adkins each liked what they heard on the other end of the line. A week later, Sonju flew into Dallas and the two spent a long evening in discussion. The next morning they joined Donald Carter in his office, poured coffee, and started talking. The chemistry was right. Donald Carter is a silver-haired, silver-tongued good ol’ boy, one of those Texas charmers who can say “bidness” and get away with it. Sonju was instantly taken with his genuine style. Sonju has his own warm and winning way, and on this day, he also had figures on Dallas and basketball that raised Carter’s eyebrows. Sonju was hired on the spot. His job: “Get us a basketball team.”
Sonju embarked on a coast-to-coast campaign, visiting with every one of the 22 NBA owners and countless other NBA officials, softening their attitude on expansion, espousing the virtues of the Dallas market, and selling the name of Donald Carter. Meanwhile, Sonju, Carter, and Adkins worked feverishly to put together a workable business model, a franchise package that made fiscal sense.
Three months later, in June 1979, at a meeting of the NBA expansion committee, a sub-group of six NBA team owners, they made their pitch. Donald Carter offered $8 million cash for a franchise. The committee mulled it over. Their answer: “No. We want $12 million over five years. But we’ll give you the number 1 draft choice.” For an expansion franchise, the top draft choice is critical; it provides the opportunity to secure a pillar player upon which a competitive team can be built or, at the very least, a marketable commodity that can be bartered for two, maybe three front-line players. But for Carter and Sonju it was only the sugar coating on a $12 million pill that was impossible to swallow.
Eight million dollars was the figure they considered fair and realistic. The committee agreed that their numbers were sound, and listened to Carter’s argument that $8 million in current dollars was the equivalent of $12 million over time. But the NBA owners were concerned with the actual price tag. In 1974, the New Orleans franchise had been granted for $6.15 million; in 1970, the Portland, Buffalo, and Cleveland franchises had gone for $3 million each. The price tag on the Dallas franchise would have direct bearing on the market value of every existing franchise: The higher the tag on the new team, the more the old ones would be worth. But $12 million didn’t fit the scale that Carter and Sonju had devised. They told the committee they’d think about it.
Carter figured the NBA owners would also think about it—and realize they’d passed up a good deal. He expected the phone to ring within a few days. It didn’t. Carter gave Sonju 30 days to persuade the owners to come off their price. Carter was willing to compromise at $10 million. Sonju hit the road again; battling airline strikes and gas shortages, he knocked on every door he could, to no avail. It was $12 million or nothing.
On July 17, Sonju was in Seattle for the baseball All Star Game. He met with Zollie Volchok, general manager of the Seattle Supersonics. “Zollie,” said Sonju, “what will it take to get a franchise in Dallas?”
“Twelve million dollars,” said Volchok.
“Okay,” said Sonju, “tell me this. If I can raise the 12, will you back me with the league on these terms: $3.5 million down and $8.5 million on an interest-free note over six years?” Volchok said yes.
On July 18, Sonju sat down with Carter and Adkins at Carter’s ranch in Coppell, near DFW Airport. He explained his new working model. Carter, still sour on the $12 million tag and disenchanted with the NBA’s way of doing business, had a further proposal: He wanted to reduce his own financial role drastically. He would leave his $100,000 in escrow with the NBA, but proposed that Sonju develop a 24-unit investor package to generate the $12 million. Carter would purchase one of the half-million dollar units; Sonju would have to sell the other 23 to whomever he could find. Carter would keep in touch with his progress, but it would be Sonju’s show. Sonju agreed. He didn’t have much choice.
Even in a money market like Dallas, finding 23 people willing to cough up half a million dollars for a team that didn’t exist to play in an arena that wasn’t built was no piece of cake. And Sonju knew the basketball team was not exactly a blue chip investment. “There are a thousand better ways to invest your money,” he told prospective buyers, “but I will promise you that you will get a return on your investment.” He appealed strongly to their sporting instincts and their civic pride.
It was a struggle. Every day was the same; up at six in the morning, jump rope to awaken his body, drink coffee to awaken his mind, ascend to his upstairs office, plot his course, pack his briefcase with the costly investor’s prospectus, and set out on the trail of money. He was like a door-to-door salesman hawking a miracle product that hadn’t been invented yet. But sell he did. And by the time he met with the expansion committee in Chicago on September 27, he had nearly done it. He presented them with the Dallas Basketball Club, Ltd. The committee smiled and nodded. The terms of the expansion franchise were agreed upon. He was full speed ahead toward the league board of governors meeting on February 3 in Washington, D.C., when the owners would make an official decision on expansion. Sonju was elated. He began to hire a skeletal staff, including a player-personnel director to begin scouting; the team was nearly a reality.
This whole thing, thought Sonju as he tried to go to sleep, could go straight down the drain [because of money politics].
On January 9, 1980, Sonju met again with the expansion committee and NBA Commissioner Larry O’Brien to iron out final details. Including one enormous detail: “You can’t have the number 1 draft pick,” they informed him. “We’ll give you the eleventh pick.” There were other minor modifications but for Sonju the loss of first pick was crushing. He had no choice; it wasn’t presented as a negotiable item. But, said the committee, with these terms we will recommend to the board of governors that Dallas be granted an expansion franchise. With this package, it will fly. Before the meeting adjourned, Sonju asked one last question. “Will there be any more changes in the deal?” “No,” the committee answered. And Commissioner O’Brien, a strong proponent of Dallas from the beginning, added his own official blessing. At least, thought Sonju, I have a team.
Upon his return to Dallas, Sonju was obligated to confront all of his investors with the new terms, stinging them with the fact that they wouldn’t be buying stock in a number one superstar anymore. It didn’t sit well. There were strong concerns that the NBA wasn’t dealing in good faith. Five investors dropped out. Sonju had to scramble again for new money; the February 3 meetings were bearing down on him. He produced yet another $30,000 investment brochure, his fourth, to reflect the new terms, and began selling again. The night before the meetings, he was close to a new package. Then Michael Gearon called from Atlanta at 2 a.m., bearing the disturbing news of “trouble with the vote.”
That day, a New York newspaper had run a story about the impending expansion vote on Dallas. One of the NBA governors was quoted describing an alliance dubbed the “Unholy Six,” six teams that would vote against expansion. In the 22-team NBA, whose bylaws require a three-quarters majority vote of 17, six negative votes would kill it. The Unholy Six included the six major market teams: New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Los Angeles. Their reasoning, according to Michael Gearon in his late-night call to Sonju, was complex.
At the league meetings the previous year, two proposals had been made: to limit the number of games televised locally by each team and to share revenues from them. The upshot of the proposals, which were backed by the smaller-market teams, would have been to limit the earning potential of the larger-market teams, thus creating more parity in bidding for player talent. The six big markets had voted the proposal down, but it had not been easy. With the entry of Dallas into the league, the balance, they felt, would be further upset.
But wait, argued Sonju. Dallas would become the 23rd team. Six teams would still constitute a veto alliance. Yes, the six reasoned, but the addition of the 24th team would require a seven-vote veto. Yes, said Sonju, but we’re the 23rd team. Yes, the six responded, but 23 is too close to 24.
Almost as much as he was sickened by the news, Sonju was astonished by the logic. It had nothing to do with Dallas, nothing to do with all his work. It was pure money politics. After a two-hour conversation with Gearon, he hung up the phone. Atlanta, with its huge Ted Turner cable system, was also wavering on the TV issue. This whole thing, thought Sonju as he tried to go to sleep, could go straight down the drain.
The next morning, at the airport on his way to Washington, Sonju signed his 24th and last investor, who arrived at DFW on an incoming plane just before Sonju flew out. Just long enough to make an agreement, just long enough to complete Sonju’s package. Now it was up to the NBA.
Norm Sonju stood before the NBA board of governors in a Washington hotel conference room and made his pitch for Dallas. Bob Folsom stood and added his thoughts, saying pointedly, “I’m a businessman first and a politician second. I’ve seen politicians change their minds, but I’m not used to businessmen changing theirs.” Sonju and Folsom departed.
Commissioner O’Brien asked each governor to state his position and how he intended to vote. The “pre-vote” came up 15 for, 7 against. Unless something was done, Dallas was dead. The meeting adjourned for lunch.
When [Sonju] returned from lunch there was a phone message on his desk from the Phoenix Suns. All it said was, “Congratulations. No need to return the call.”
When they returned, Larry O’Brien pleaded for a new deal. So did Los Angeles owner Jerry Buss, who said he wasn’t against expansion, he just didn’t like the economics of this deal. They worked to salvage a compromise and came up with a new package: 50 percent front money instead of the original 29; a letter of credit on the unpaid balance, which would add some $350,000 to the total cost; and 10 percent interest on the unpaid balance instead of the original zero percent, which would add a staggering $1.9 million to the total franchise cost. Then, almost as an afterthought, the owners decided that each team could protect eight players in the expansion draft instead of the originally promised seven, severely reducing the pool from which the Dallas club could select the core of its team. That provision, Sonju later said, was salt in the wound.
The governors voted 18-3-1 to approve the new deal. (Seattle’s no vote and Cleveland’s decision to abstain were registered as protests over the raw deal given Dallas; New York and Chicago held to firm no’s.) Larry Weinberg of Portland, head of the expansion committee and a strong ally of Dallas, delivered the bad news to Sonju in an upstairs hotel room.
“What do you think, Norm?” asked Weinberg.
“I just don’t know what to think,” replied the disconsolate Sonju. “How am I going to go back to Dallas and tell my investors that the NBA switched the deal on us again? I just don’t know.”
Sonju delivered the news to Folsom and the two commiserated. What angered them most was how far they’d been led down the primrose path. The expansion committee had assured them it was all set, then two of its members had voted no. Even worse were the more personal betrayals: None of their close associates in the league had bothered to warn them. Three teams had decided to vote no before the meetings—Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia—and nobody had warned Dallas. Dallas’ Lamar Hunt, for example, owned 11 percent of the Chicago Bulls; Folsom now called him on the phone to register his dismay. Sonny Werblin of Gulf and Western, owners of the New York Knicks, also received a call from Folsom, who had assisted Gulf and Western’s Associates Corporation of North America when it made a major move to Dallas. Pat Williams, general manager of Philadelphia, had been best man at Norm Sonju’s wedding; even he hadn’t bothered to raise a distress signal. The politics were too strong. Sonju chose not to attend the press conference. He was afraid of what he might say.
He returned to Dallas and prepared himself to tell his investors that they were now getting less product for more money. The investors, not surprisingly, began to hedge. To amplify Sonju’s plight, the economy was souring; in the two months after the league meeting the prime interest rate rose from 15 percent to 20. Sonju was killing himself to try to keep the deal alive, but for every new investor, another would drop out. Sonju had spent more than $200,000 out of his own pocket on his dream of a Dallas basketball team, and now, the dream was slipping away.
Donald Carter watched as Norm Sonju scrambled desperately to pick up the pieces. Norm had become “family” to Donald Carter; he watched Sonju’s struggle as if it were his own son’s. From time to time, Sonju would come to him after a long and discouraging day of work; they would sit and sip coffee for hours. “Don’t give up,” Carter would say. “You put the deal together once, you can do it again.” But Donald Carter, too, could see it slipping away.
On Tuesday morning in early April, Carter called Sonju and arranged a breakfast meeting at Coco’s restaurant. Carter asked Sonju where he stood. Sonju said he had 16 investors and was close on two more. “Get your eighteen,” said Carter, “and I’ll take the other six units. We’ll meet again on Friday.” By Friday Sonju had gained one new investor—and lost two.
The next week they met in the evening for coffee. Carter picked up a napkin and began writing. He wrote down a list of concessions he wanted from the NBA. “We’ll offer them a take-it-or-leave-it deal,” he said. “If they take it, I’ll pick up the tab for the franchise, we’ll get ourselves a basketball team, and we’ll worry about the investment units later.”
Over the next two weeks, Carter, Sonju, and Doug Adkins put together the new deal. Dallas NBA would be a general partnership consisting of the three, a wholly owned subsidiary of Home Interiors and Gifts. There would still be 24 investment units: 12 would be sold to a dozen of Sonju’s original investors; 12 would be retained, for the time being, by the partnership. The new proposal to the NBA would include certain revisions involving initial down payment, payment schedules, and interest schedules. The price tag would remain the same; the payment revisions would amount to a savings to Dallas NBA of less than $400,000. It was more a philosophical demand than a fiscal one, but it was important.
On Friday, April 25, the new deal was presented to the NBA governors. Carter, Sonju, and Adkins had made a pact among themselves to make it their last shot; if the offer were rejected, they were through with the franchise game. The partnership would seek to buy another NBA club or get out of basketball entirely.
The NBA attorneys made arrangements for a Telex vote of the governors. With a bit of crafty, last-minute manipulation by the NBA attorneys, the usual requirement for a unanimous vote by Telex was waived. The vote would be in on Monday, the 28th. Meanwhile, Sonju had arranged a press conference for Thursday, May 1. There he would unveil the new franchise—if there was one. As of the time he left for lunch on Monday the 28th, he still didn’t know.
When he returned from lunch there was a phone message on his desk from the Phoenix Suns. All it said was, “Congratulations. No need to return the call.” The official call came at 3:15. The vote was 20 to 2, with New York and Chicago voting no. Dallas had a basketball team. And Norm Sonju had all of 30 seconds to savor his victory.
There was no room in his life for celebration. As had been the case through most of his vigil, he was buried in basketball business: handling 60 phone calls a day, slugging through a daily “things to do” list of 45 entries, dealing simultaneously with employees, press, NBA officials, arena people. The new horizon was the Thursday morning press conference for official announcement of the franchise and presentation of the team name, logo, and colors. By press conference time there had been 70 revisions made in the logo alone. His temporary offices out on LBJ were a circus.
At 2 a.m. Thursday everything was done. Sonju drove home, exhausted, stood in his driveway, and knew instantly that he couldn’t sleep. There was no elation, no euphoria. It was more a numbness. He woke his wife Carole and they talked together quietly, outside under the clear night sky, until 4:30 in the morning. He awoke at six, passed up his morning jump rope ritual, and drove to Union Terminal, site of the press conference. At 10 a.m., he stood at the podium and said, “Welcome.” For a man standing at the pinnacle after an excruciating four-year climb, he seemed strangely subdued.
Sonju introduced NBA Commissioner Larry O’Brien to make the official announcement. Said O’Brien, “This is the end of a long and torturous route—and as I look here at Norm Sonju and Bob Folsom, my God, it has been torturous.”
When the press conference—a sedately triumphant affair—was over, and most of the media and guests had departed, Norm Sonju, smiling a satisfied smile, put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and said, “Carole, honey, I’m going to grab a bite to eat now and then head back out to the office.” Carole smiled back. “I’ll tell you what you ought to do,” she said. “You ought to come home and take a nap.” An unmistakably wistful look passed over his face; for a brief moment he saw himself stretched on his bed, shoes off, the Dallas Mavericks tucked safely under his pillow. “Oh, I can’t, honey,” he said. “I’ve got so much to do.”
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Author
David Bauer
David Bauer
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David Bauer is the former deputy managing editor of Sports Illustrated.