Pacers' Walsh Career Winds Down

[Pooh]

Career winds down
Exec wants time for family after 17 years with Pacers

By Mark Montieth
[email protected]
August 7, 2003


Donnie Walsh relinquished a job le when he hired Larry Bird as the Indiana Pacers' president of basketball operations July 11. But he's yet to give up much of the workload.

Walsh is still churning out workdays that routinely spill over into evenings and weekends while Bird gets acclimated to his new position.

Soon after Reggie Miller's new contract is finalized, though, Walsh will begin shifting more of his focus away from the Pacers. It will mark the beginning of the end of a 17-year run -- easily the longest among NBA front-office team leaders -- during which he's gained widespread league respect.

Walsh's transition is unique. He's under no pressure from ownership, he has no health problems and he has no immediate plans to retire. Yet he's voluntarily turning over control of the basketball operations to Bird, putting him in charge of drafts, trades, free agency, scouting and coaching hires, because he believes it's a good long-term move for the franchise.

Walsh will finish the remaining four years of his contract as CEO of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, the corporate umbrella that covers the Fever, Firebirds and all the events that pass through Conseco Fieldhouse.

But he plans to slow down. He's 62, and he's reaffirmed his priorities since his 12-year-old granddaughter, Casey Walsh, died in her sleep of an apparent asthmatic attack in June.

Walsh paused long enough recently to discuss the most important transaction the Pacers have made since he became general manager more than 17 years ago.

Q. How will your job change with your new position?

"My responsibilities are still the same, but as far as the day-to-day basketball part of it, that will be Larry. I'll be here and I think we'll work together. But I am trying to cut it back. You can only do so many of these 12-hour, 16-hour days.

"As we came into (the fieldhouse) and we got bigger, it just got harder and harder to do. You need somebody who's just thinking about (the Pacers) all the time. That's how I got started, doing that. I felt it was the right time. I felt it when Larry was the coach. I knew this building was going to change things, because it made it a much bigger company. It's a lot more complex now."

Q. Will you have the final say on personnel matters involving the Pacers, or will Bird?

"When I tell you I'm giving it to him, I'm giving it to him. I could, if I wanted to, have approval of everything. But I'm not going to do that.

"Everybody's got somebody above them. I can't do everything I want. I've got to ask the owners. The only difference now is that I'm telling Bird, 'I want you to build the team. I want you to set up the scouting, I want you to have the relationship with the agents and the coaches and the players.' "

Q. But from a practical standpoint, won't he rely heavily on your opinion?

"If history serves as any basis, less and less so (laughing)."

Q. Will it be difficult to give up your responsibilities with the basketball operations, or do you look forward to that?

"I think I look forward to it. Whether it's going to be easy for me to do it, I don't know."

Q. People sometimes describe you as a workaholic. Do you agree with that?

"No. Anybody who does this job will end up doing it the same way. That's just what it is. It's easy to look at it from a distance and say that, but the fact is you've got a lot of elements to this company."

Q. Some people don't believe you'll be able to back off. Can you?

"They don't know me that well. I'm like everybody else. I've worked at my job and I've taken care of my family. That's all I've done. I haven't ac ulated an empire."

Q. Did your granddaughter's death affect your feelings toward the job?

"It confirmed it. I hadn't hired Larry yet, but we were well down the road with it. When I went to the funeral I did think, I've spent every hour of my life the last 17 years in this job and something like this makes me realize I'm missing something. Because I didn't have that much time to spend with this little girl.

"As you get older you realize, I'm working my ass off, but at some point I want to be able to, I guess, have a reward in life, where you have time to spend time with people before you die. I started realizing that's running out here. You only have so much time. I guess it confirmed the direction we were taking.

"That was a tough time for our family. I spent three or four days (in Denver for the funeral). I knew when I was coming back here I was going right into free agency and hiring Larry and I just thought, 'I'm glad I'm going in this direction because I don't want to have to keep doing what I'm doing to the detriment of spending time with the people who are important to me.' "

Q. When Bird gets integrated with his new job, how will his approach be different from yours?

"His style will be different than mine. I think Bird is a very clear, concise thinking guy. I think he'll be much more clipped in the way he deals with things. I think people like that. I think my style was to bring a consensus in some things, or to have a lot of options out there and be able to choose one at the right time. Larry's more (straight down the middle)."

Q. I talked to him the other day and he said, 'I'm going to get this done. It's going to take some time, but I'm going to get it done.' But everyone in this job feels that way. What qualities does he have that will make him successful?

"He's starting with a lot. He has great knowledge of the game. He knows what it takes to win. That puts him ahead of a lot of people. And he's been part of a great franchise (as a player with the Boston Celtics) when it was a great franchise.

"The actual doing of it, he'll be like everyone else. He'll have to get in here and find out what he can do and what he can't do."

Q. You've gained a great deal of respect in this position and done it for a long time. Can he step in and do it as well?

"It's healthy to have new people come in and do things and take over. You can't have the same thinking all the way through, no matter how good or bad it is. At a certain point, it needs to be changed, it needs to get new energy. That's why this is good with Larry.

"It's built-in in America. The president can only be there for eight years. Even in Communism they have revolutions. The party leaders get to be there too long and it's not what it's supposed to be, so they change it.

"I've had that feeling lately. When I was around Bird (during his coaching tenure), I realized it takes someone like this to run the franchise. We brand ourselves as a small-market team, but one in a strong basketball market. You don't even have to say that if Larry's here. He symbolizes all that.

"You can go out and get general managers and coaches, but they're never going to have that element to them like Larry has. Other than Slick (former coach and general manager Bob Leonard), you're never going to have another time when you can have a guy like that in this position."

[ducks]

wow no wonder they brought in bird.

[Pooh]

Yeap.