Event Details:

The Stanford GSB Chapter of Hong Kong welcomed Terdema Ussery, President & CEO of the Dallas Mavericks of the NBA to a breakfast presentation.

From turning around the then-failing minor league Continental Basketball Association (and, in the process, redefining it as the League of Extroadordinarily Failed Gentlemen), to turning Nike’s top athletes into global brands at Nike Sports Management, to redefining the integrated modern sports management model of team operations, endorsements, venue and broadcast at the Dallas Mavericks/HDnet, Terdema continues to rewrite the playbook of the business. Along the way, he has worked with modern sports most important leaders, including Phil Knight, Mark Cuban and Ross Perot.

Terdema’s personal journey is no less extraordinary. An unexpected suggestion to apply for a scholarship at LA’s Thacher School took him on a path out of Watts and to Princeton, Harvard’s Kennedy School, Berkeley for a law degree and an initial associate lawyer role at Morrison and Forrester. But a plane crash in Sioux City, Iowa, changed all that. The then-commission of the CBA was killed, an emergency team need to be recruited to save the league, and pro-bono work with the then-Los Angeles Raiders led to Terdema’s being ask to join the effort and entering professional sports management full time.

Throughout his career, Terdema has been at the nexus of innovation, lateral thinking and initiative. We are very fortunate to welcome him to the Stanford GSB Chapter of HK and are looking forward to his thoughts on where sports management and Terdema go from here.

Speaker’s Bio: Terdema Ussery

Terdema L. Ussery, II, President & CEO, Dallas Mavericks of the NBA

Terdema has been President and CEO of the Dallas Mavericks since its founding, working first under Ross Perot, then Marc Cuban. He is a member of the WNBA board of directors and an alternative governor for the Mavericks on the NBA Board of Governors. Formerly, he was CEO of HDnet; president of Nike Sports Management; and commissioner of the Continental Basketball Association. He serves on the boards of directors of Timberland, Treehouse Foods, and Texas Health Resources, among others. In the public service arena, he is a past Trustee of Princeton University, and a current Trustee of the Communities Foundation of Texas, as well as a board member of Dallas After School All-Stars and of CTS America. Terdema holds an AB from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, an MPA from Harvard’s John F. Kenney School of Government and a JD from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was an executive editor of the California Law Review.