Bookbinder has been around forever. He's always been cool whenever I've come across him.
RC Buford the replacement? WTF? He should worried about who to draft ... not what skit the coyote is going to do next.
Don't worry, Dennis has it all under control.Bookbinder has been around forever. He's always been cool whenever I've come across him.
RC Buford the replacement? WTF? He should worried about who to draft ... not what skit the coyote is going to do next.
Like I was saying timvp...Bookbinder has been around forever. He's always been cool whenever I've come across him.
RC Buford the replacement? WTF? He should worried about who to draft ... not what skit the coyote is going to do next.
This would make more sense than RC being involved with the business affairs.http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sa...9/daily15.html
Maybe mysa/KENS doesn't have the full story, or the bizjournal is wrong.
on a side note, Pop doesn't care much for Russ. --> He went to bat for Howard. Apparently, it didn't do much to help.
Jay Howard aka Mr Personality, aka Mr Cold Fish. Ah, memories.
Wasn't Mr Bookbinder's wife ill?
Pretty out of left field this going on.
best of luck to him.
As I said in the first post, the initial plan is for Pych to pick up most of Bookbinder's job responsibilities. The exact structure and assignment of responsibilities is TBD from what I understand.
Well, he's been around for about 20 years. He felt it was time to go. The Spurs will have fresh blood in there. Maybe Stan Kelley is next to go.
RC is not taking over the business operations. Here is the email from Holt:
-----Original Message-----
From: Diane Flack On Behalf Of Peter Holt
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 3:12 PM
Subject: Announcement
Russ Bookbinder resigned today as Executive Vice President of Business Operations. As you know, Russ has been a long-time
Spurs executive and we are thankful for the contributions he has made to the success of the organization. I know all of you
will join me in wishing Russ and his family well as he pursues a new career path.
All franchise sports operations will now be under the leadership of R.C. Buford, and all business operations will now be under the
leadership of Rick Pych.
Thanks to each of you for your continuing commitment and support toward the success of Spurs Sports & Entertainment.
Peter M. Holt
Obviously, I stand corrected. I liked Jay Howard very much. By the way, how did they "put the screws" to Howard?
They said on WOAI this morning that his wife has MS.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/b...n.3973703.html
Spurs lose top businessman in Bookbinder
Web Posted: 06/11/2008 10:39 AM CDT
Jeff McDonald
San Antonio Express-News
An avid fan of thrill sports, Russ Bookbinder has swam with sharks and jumped out of an airplane at 14,000 feet.
In many ways, what he did Tuesday was even more frightening.
Bookbinder announced he is leaving his job as executive vice president of business operations with Spurs Sports & Entertainment, after more than 20 years with the club.
“It's something I've been thinking about for a year, a year and a half,” Bookbinder said. “I just never allowed it to come out of my mouth.”
For the past two decades, Bookbinder has been a fixture in the Spurs' front office, a behind-the-scenes force widely credited with dragging the team's game-day and marketing operations to the modern era.
Hired by Red McCombs as an executive vice president in January 1988, he is one of a handful of Spurs employees who can trace the club's path from HemisFair Arena to the AT&T Center.
The Spurs employed no more than 25 people the day Bookbinder arrived. In the time since, the franchise has grown into the sprawling en y known as Spurs Sports & Entertainment.
In his 21st season in San Antonio, Bookbinder, 56, oversaw operations for four professional teams — the Spurs, the WNBA's Silver Stars, the NBA Development League's Austin Toros, and the AHL's Rampage, San Antonio's minor league hockey team.
Bookbinder was a key cog in the franchise's metamorphosis from a small-town basketball club into a four-team, multi-sport monolith. That exponential growth, in part, led to his resignation.
“That's a lot of nights in the arena,” Bookbinder said. “It takes its toll.”
Spurs owner Peter Holt, who purchased controlling stake in the club in 1996, says Bookbinder will be missed.
“When I first joined the Spurs as an owner 12 years ago, I didn't know the difference between a basketball and a tractor,” Holt said. “Russ Bookbinder taught me a lot about the NBA and the business of professional sports.”
When Bookbinder arrived in 1988, the Spurs attracted between four and five thousand fans a night to venerable HemisFair Arena, to cheer the likes of Alvin Robertson and Johnny Dawkins.
“They were the hard-core basketball fans,” Bookbinder recalled. “If we were ever going to grow our business, we had to appeal to a larger market segment. Our goal was to transform what we did into family entertainment.”
What Bookbinder set out to construct was a precursor to today's multi-media game-day experience at the AT&T Center.
Under his direction, the Spurs added music pumping from the loudspeakers, on-court entertainment during timeouts, and crude video on the Arena's state-of-the-art pixilated scoreboard system.
Early in his tenure, Bookbinder also pushed the Spurs into the modern era of community relations, with players making personal appearances and going to charity events.
“He was involved with everything,” said Bob Bass, the Spurs' general manager at the time. “He brought those things in and went full speed ahead with it.”
Bookbinder was also instrumental in bringing the 1996 NBA All-Star Game to San Antonio and has worked with the San Antonio Sports Foundation in its efforts to attract other sporting events to the city.
As a member of the Sports Foundation's Board of Directors, he was among the founders of the Alamo Bowl in 1994.
After more than 20 years at full speed ahead, Bookbinder is ready to take his foot off the gas.
His son and daughter, Josh and Jessy, are grown and out of the house. He plans to spend more time with his wife, Tammy, who is battling multiple sclerosis. A cancer survivor himself, Bookbinder says he plans to use the next few months to take one long, well-deserved breath.
He is in good health and aims to take advantage of it.
“I'm going to take a step back, enjoy the summer and see what happens,” Bookbinder said. “Right now, I've got a nice peace about everything.”
Perhaps, someday later, there will be time for more thrills.
[email protected]
“When I first joined the Spurs as an owner 12 years ago, I didn't know the difference between a basketball and a tractor,” Holt said.
I don't know if that bodes worse for the Spurs or for his Tractor company.
While Jay was going through a messy divorce, Bookbinder and Ashwood conspired to fire him.
Jay was negotiating with the Spurs for a new contract while employed at WOAI. He had 2 seperate agreements. Ashwood led him to believe that he had job security with WOAI and that effected his negotiations with the Spurs.
Once Bookbinder said" We are going with someone else", Ashwood decided to hammer with the "You're no longer needed here, we hired Don Harris to do your show." Don "I am the most awesome person I know "Harris. Yeah, that lasted.
Last edited by tmtcsc; 06-11-2008 at 11:39 PM.
Why don't you apply for the job?
Turning down a salary offer from an employer is always a hazardous proposition. I'm wondering if he really was naive enough to think that OAI would continue to employ him if the Spurs cut him loose? Their contract comes up for renewal from time to time, too. If I were in the process of negotiating concurrent contracts with both of them, I would consider OAI as an arm of the Spurs organization.
It is a hazardous proposition but the offer was the standard low-ball, not in the park offer. Probably what they gave Schoening.
He knew Ashwood didn't like him and he didn't like Ashwood. He even went to him and said, "I'm negotiating with the Spurs, if you want me to leave, I'll leave and just be a Spurs employee. The ty part happened when Ashwood said, "no, we can do this, we'll figure it out." So of course, Jay approaches negotiations with Bookbinder a little differently at that point.
Pop was really pissed that Jay was fired. From what I understand, that was the end of any type of friendship with Russ. As for Jay's poor replacement, Pop has absolutely little to no respect for him. He's viewed by many of the coaches as more of a nuisance than anything.
I used to enjoy going to the Inside Scoop luncheons where fans had a chance to speak with Coach Pop. I remember asking him if we were not going to re-sign Vinny and he gave me a straight, truthful answer. He said, we are log jammed at that position and we like what Jaren brings to the floor. So, one of them has to go and I don't see Vinny in our plans. I was floored ! Especially since that was exactly what I wanted to hear.
That was before Vinny found out. The rule at those luncheons was that nothing was supposed to leave the room or you couldn't bring up what was discussed in those sessions, on the radio.
When I asked Pop about Vinny, we were heading to the parking lot and no one else was part of the conversation. Maybe that was why he was so forthcoming.
I remember "Brooklyn Dave" at those Inside Scoop luncheons too. Man. those were great.
Now we have:
"Spurs fans, Remember the Alamo and Rember your Spurs, the 2003 Champions !"
or
"Its a Manu Tres (sounds like Trace)"
or
"Trey-bien"
or
"His spot, his shot !"
BANG !!
Russ did not want to resign, however his wife's MS has progressively worsened. He has also recently had to deal with cancer himself.
So you might want to cut him some slack.
Bookbinder's done a heckuva job for years. Consider the source of the criticism, a bunch of nimrods whose lives revolve around what the intro music is or the color of the logo on the wood floor.
Perhaps Bookbinder's leaving, the shake up in the front office, Holt making a 30-day review might be a result of the ever increasing number of Spur ticket holders electing NOT to renew their tickets? Kind of hard to sell a 15% increase on already expensive tickets for a product that is declining in quality in a league dripping with taint during a growing recession.
Yes yes, And Tim announces his retirement tomorrow, So Tony Parker demands he traded to LA, and Manu stays in Argentina after learning all of this...
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