The DC sports foundation
Decades ago, Abe Pollin showed up at Wes Unseld's wedding. Years later, he showed up at Unseld's father's funeral. Fill in the blanks for all the moments in between, "too many to even mention," said Unseld, a man who worked for Pollin as a player, a coach and an executive.
More than 30 years ago, Pollin met young lawyers who were just showing up in a business in which he had already toiled for decades. "He couldn't have been nicer to me, a kid lawyer," said Gary Bettman, now the commissioner of the NHL. "Just extraordinarily kind, when he didn't need to be," said Stan Kasten, now the president of the Washington Nationals.
And when Matt Williams, the Washington Wizards' chief of staff and executive vice president, spoke with Pollin, his boss, on Tuesday morning, the ailing owner had one message: "Make sure you let the staff out early tomorrow for Thanksgiving."
This message, Williams said, came a week after Pollin gave every member of his Washington Sports and Entertainment company a Thanksgiving bonus, "and it didn't matter if you were a part-time usher making $8 an hour or an executive making $800 an hour."
In the hours after Pollin died Tuesday at age 85, the man who brought both professional basketball and hockey to Washington was certainly remembered in the sports world as a pioneer, a man who fought fiercely for both sports in the District and leaves a tangible legacy in the arena the Wizards played in that night, Verizon Center.
But Pollin was remembered, perhaps more, for the personal touches that color nearly every interaction he had with any of his employees, be they players or concessionaires.
"He's probably the most loyal man I've ever known in my life," Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld said.
That was true even decades ago, when both the then-Bullets and the Capitals were relatively new to Washington. In 1978, Kasten was a young executive with the Atlanta Hawks, who lost to the Bullets in the NBA playoffs. The Bullets would go on to win the NBA title that year, Pollin's crowning achievement in 45 years of life in the NBA. In defeat, though, Kasten had made a friend for life.
"The one over-riding characteristic that I remember, especially from way back then, was that Abe was always league-first," Kasten said by phone Tuesday night. "League ahead of team. That's not always easy to do, but it's so critical as you're building these leagues. We went through some tough times over the years on many different issues, and he was a tough guy -- always very determined and principled. But if it was ever league versus team, he looked to the strength of the collective enterprise. He understood that."
That kind of acumen helped make Pollin, as NBA Commissioner David Stern said Tuesday in a statement, the NBA's "most revered member." But he did not, those who worked for him say, expect reverence in return. Business meetings almost always began with questions about an employee's family. In 2003, Grunfeld met Pollin when he was interviewing to become the Wizards' general manager.
"He was asking about me," Grunfeld said. "He didn't ask too much about basketball. He wanted to know about my family, my children, my background. We probably spent the first half hour about that before we ever talked about the game or basketball or the kind of things I did in that at all. He wanted to know you as an individual. . . .
"He always told me the two most important things to him are loyalty and talent, but loyalty above talent. And I think that's how he lived his life."
Because of that, longtime friends and employees said he forged strong relationships with many of the people who worked for him. Unseld, for instance, moved into the Bullets' front office after his retirement as a player in 1981, then coached the team from 1987 to '94. Even after Unseld went 202-345, Pollin made him the general manager in 1996.
"I have no doubt that he kept me longer in positions than he should have," Unseld said, "and longer than I wanted him to. He was loyal. And he understood the whole picture."
It was not, though, just loyalty that made Pollin an owner for whom employees wanted to work hard. Pollin loved his teams, and as Williams said, "If we won a game, you knew it was going to be a good day in the office. If we lost a game, it was going to be a bad day. That's just the way it was."
Those traits all helped Pollin establish successful franchises first at Capital Centre in Landover, and for the last 10 years in downtown Washington, in a neighborhood that has transformed with Verizon Center as its anchor. Bettman, who worked with Pollin both during his time at the NBA and then the NHL, said none of it would have happened without Pollin.
"I think that loyalty also embodies an emotion of commitment and passion," Bettman said by phone Tuesday night. "He was as passionate about sports teams, as passionate about Washington, as anyone. Even when both teams went through difficult times, he never gave up. He was committed. The fact that both teams endured both through good times and bad was a testament to Abe's commitment, passion and loyalty."
Source: Washington Post
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