FORMER U-M PLAYER HAS TO STAY IN TOUCH AS A SPORTS AGENT

March 8, 2004
mlive.com

By John Heuser

Question: What do NBA players Kobe Bryant, Carlos Boozer, Morris Peterson, Corey Maggette, Chris Kaman, Keyon Dooling, Gerald Wallace, DeShawn Stevenson and Fred Hoiberg have in common?

Answer: Their agent, former University of Michigan basketball player Rob Pelinka.

Pelinka, a brainy, clean-living backup guard for the Wolverines from 1989-93, fills a different supporting role now. Be it checking in with Los Angeles Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy about the progress of Clippers players Maggette, Kaman and Dooling. Or being there for Bryant, who is facing well-publicized rape charges in Colorado. Or working to find an endorsement deal for Boozer, Pelinka is fully immersed in his 24/7 profession, doing something he never anticipated a decade ago.

"Some people said to me, 'Why do you want to get into a business with such a tarnished reputation,' " Pelinka said during a recent telephone interview. "I looked at it as a challenge of going into that business and being a person of integrity.

"I was determined to make a difference in people's lives. I look at myself as being someone who has integrity and honesty, and I want to bring that to these relationships."

It's a job that demands a businessman's acumen, a salesman's persuasiveness, a lawyer's eye for detail and the personal touch of an older brother, as Pelinka often thinks of himself vis a vis his players. The fact that it's about basketball, too, makes the work that much better from Pelinka's perspective.

"I'm still a basketball junkie at heart," Pelinka said. "I don't think my level of passion for the game has changed because it's a part of my job. I love a good game. Because I'm so close to the clients, it makes it even more interesting."

Always on call

Pelinka, who lives in Santa Monica, Calif., and works in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, is tied to technology. Or rather the communications part of it. If his clients can't reach him, he's not doing his job, he figures.

A cell phone and Blackberry e-mail device stay close at hand. Since Pelinka switched from working as a lawyer to being an agent for SFX Sports more than three years ago, he hasn't gone on a real vacation. Instead, he relaxes by spending slices of time hiking in the mountains, playing pickup basketball with buddies, enjoying the theater, reading books such as Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and relaxing with his girlfriend, who leads her own busy life as a pediatrician.

"The commitment I have to my guys is being available when they need me," Pelinka said. "This isn't a business where I can say to clients, 'I'm going to Europe for three weeks. I'll call you when I get back.' Those are the sacrifices you have to make."

Much of Pelinka's day involves talking. With general managers, with coaches, with companies, with players, with players' families. No matter what the time.

"There can be so much pressure on a guy," Pelinka said. "I got a call at one or two in the morning from a player when he was first in the NBA and he was in his bedroom, in tears, wondering if he was going to survive.

"You have to be up for those calls as much as you are when you're flying around the country on private jets negotiating million-dollar shoe deals. For me, being in the bunker during the hard times is just as gratifying."

Goal-oriented from start

Long before Pelinka began representing players, he hung with pros-to-be at Crisler Arena. Pelinka, a high school All-American from suburban Chicago, played on Michigan's 1989 national championship team, which was loaded with future NBA athletes, most notably Glen Rice and Terry Mills. Pelinka's college career, during which he played in 119 games (15th on Michigan's all-time list), also spanned the Fab Five era in Ann Arbor.

It was at Michigan that Pelinka gained his first exposure to sports agents. He didn't fancy what he saw.

"I got a look at it from the other side of the fence than I'm on now," Pelinka said. "I used to think that the people in the business were a little bit sleazy and slimy. I told Chris (Webber) that the last thing I wanted to be was one of those types of people. He sort of laughed."

Whatever Pelinka ended up doing professionally, people had him pegged for success. Before he matriculated at Michigan, Pelinka and his parents met with Michigan law professor Doug Kahn for lunch at a local delicatessen.

Kahn, who has held Michigan basketball, football and hockey season tickets for decades, had volunteered to mentor student-athletes at the university. His understudy turned out to be Pelinka.

"You could see, even in that first meeting, that he was an extremely thoughtful young man," said Kahn. "He talked about school, his goals, long-range plans. He came across as someone who had his feet on the ground and was extremely able."

The pair struck up a relationship that remains strong to this day. On one visit to Chicago, Kahn and his wife, Mary, stayed with Pelinka's parents. The Kahns invited Pelinka to their home for meals while he was a student.

"My wife is not greatly interested in athletics, to put it mildly, but she went to basketball games the years Rob was here," Kahn said. "Then she stopped. He was kind of like a second son to her."

Brilliant balancer

A valuable reserve on the basketball court, Pelinka performed more impressively in the classroom. He majored in finance as an undergraduate, and pulled down a 3.9 grade point average.

Chris Seter, who played at Michigan with Pelinka and roomed with him on the road, remembered his friend's ability to succeed on many levels.

"Most student-athletes have a terribly difficult time balancing athletics, the maturation process and academics," said Seter, now a banker in Milwaukee. "Most people can concentrate on just one. If you're doing two, that's pretty successful. Rob could really do it all."

His senior year, Pelinka landed a prestigious NCAA Walter Byers postgraduate scholarship, which is awarded to one male and one female athlete nationally each year. He enrolled in Michigan's law school. Not so much because Pelinka had a long-held desire to be a lawyer, but because of his respect for Kahn.

Pelinka took several classes from his mentor, who specializes in tax law, and made an indelible impression on him one day. When another student asked a question, Kahn said the answer was somewhere in the class text, which was a thousand-page treatise he had authored. Pelinka gave a more precise answer.

"He said something like, 'It's on page 578,"' Kahn said, chuckling. "It was pretty impressive."

Toward the end of law school, Pelinka and a friend fixed a gourmet dinner for the Kahns as a way to thank them and say good-bye. After graduating cum laude, Pelinka was hired to practice corporate law for the Chicago firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.

"I found it to be incredibly exhilarating," he said of his job. "It was sort of like the John Grisham book 'The Firm.' Working 90 hours a week, flying from Chicago to New York, doing a lot of corporate transactions, going at such a fast pace."

Despite the thrill, Pelinka found that something was missing: the kind of personal relationships he had savored at Michigan.

'A personal services job'

Between graduating from business school in the spring of 1993 and starting law school that fall, Pelinka flirted briefly with the idea of playing basketball professionally. For a month, he hooped it up in an NBA summer camp in Long Beach, Calif., and fielded offers to play in Europe.

More important, he met Arn Tellem, a U-M law school grad and one of the NBA's top agents. Pelinka said no to the proposals from Europe, but more than five years later would say yes to Tellem when he suggested Pelinka come to work at SFX as an attorney. After two years at SFX, Pelinka became an agent.

Among his laundry list of duties, official and otherwise, Pelinka prepares new clients for the NBA Draft, negotiates contracts, tracks endorsement deals and, at times, hangs out with his players on the road, playing video games or going to movies. He'll attend clients' family functions and help players move into new homes, if need be.

"People misidentify this as a glamorous job," Pelinka said. "This is a personal service job. That means whatever the client needs, you've got to be willing to do it."

About the only thing Pelinka won't do for his players is handle their money. He's also unwilling to discuss the financial compensation for his own work.

In a single year, Pelinka will attend more than 75 games, following his players in the NBA and scouting for potential new clients who have NBA talent. An agent can't represent too many athletes, Pelinka said, adding that the more players he represents, the more leverage he'll have with NBA team officials.

While the frenetic pace of his job may seem best suited to the young, Pelinka disagreed with that notion. He said he can envision himself eventually becoming a father figure for his clients, similar to the role Professor Kahn filled for him at Michigan.