RI Connection Gets His Due: From Tech Exec to Boston Celtics President - Kevin Stacom

RI Connection Gets His Due: From Tech Exec to Boston Celtics President - Kevin Stacom

Rich Gotham, President of the Boston Celtics, Providence College Class of ‘86, is slated to receive an Honorary Doctor of Business Administration degree on Sunday at graduation exercises.

Gotham is the lesser-known “other” strong Rhode Island connection to the Boston Celtics.

Justifiably, every Rhode Island Celtics fan can take a lot of pride in the fact that one of its native sons, Joe Mazzulla, from the town of Johnston and Hendricken H.S. graduate, has been the head coach of the Boston Celtics since September of 2022, and has already, in his young career, won an NBA Championship in 2024.

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Obviously, being the head coach of the Celtics is a very high-profile job, and Mazzulla’s relatively meteoric rise to that position is an interesting story in itself, but there is another unlikely tale to be told of a Providence College graduate.

Gotham, who’s held other key positions for the Celtics at the other end of the organizational spectrum since April of 2023, was initially hired as Executive VP, promoted to Chief Operating Officer in June of 2006, and finally team President in April of 2007 - a position Gotham has held to the present day.

It’s been my experience, having been around the NBA front office side of the business for many years, that many people within most organizations had a strong personal friendship or familial relationship with someone who was able to initially get them started in the professional sports business, and nepotism abounds.

When I recently had the opportunity to speak with Rich Gotham, he readily explained that it was not the case for him. 

Rich explained to me that his business career began when he was recruited later in his senior year (1986) at a job fair venue at Providence College by NCR Corporation located in Dayton, Ohio. He said he was one of about 80 guys that NCR brought in from around the country for sales positions. He quickly rose to a management and business development position.

From there, Rich moved on to FTP Software, Inc., where he became VP of Channel Sales and Market Development, setting the stage for an even bigger and more substantial position at Lycos, Inc another tech company that was a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff. 

Lycos was a web-based business launched in 1994, and Gotham told me that they were in the search engine business before anyone ever heard of Google.

Bottom line: As VP of Sales and Business Development, he was a big part of Lycos exceeding Wall Street analysts' expectations for revenue and profitability growth for 19 consecutive quarters. The Lycos network grew into the most visited website on the Internet by 2001.

The company was sold in 2003, and Rich explained that at that point, he made up his mind he was going to kick back a bit, decompress, and spend some valuable time with his young family.

 

When the Celtics Came Calling

Then his phone rang a few days after the sale. 

On the other end was someone from a venture capital firm, Highland Capital, who was just involved in the purchase of Lycos.

He introduced himself as Wyc Grousbeck and said that he was part of a group, Boston Basketball Partners, LLC, that was in the process of buying the Boston Celtics for about $360 million. 

He relayed to Rich that, as he was initiating his search for someone to run the business side of his new acquisition, three different people who didn’t even know each other came up with the name Rich Gotham as a suggestion for someone he should recruit for the job.

So he said, “I guess I should give you a call to see if you might be interested!”

Wyc Grousbeck should be given a lot of credit for the choice.

On so many levels, Gotham was the perfect fit. Yes, his 15 years of experience in the Tech business, with the accompanying marketing and people-management skill sets, would prove to be indispensable, but just as important was his gut-level understanding and appreciation of what the Celtics Mystique meant as an inter-generational civic birthright for its fans.

In the back and forth of our conversation, I tried to describe for him what is was like for a young person like myself to walk into that locker room as a rookie at training camp with all the older established stars like John Havliceck, Don Nelson, Paul Silas, Jo Jo White, Dave Cowens, Don Chaney, Coach Tom Heinsohn, and the ever present Red Auerbach in attendance.

It was 1974, and the Celtics had just come off their 12th Championship in 17 years the previous spring.

There was an intangible ethic present that you could cut with a knife.

Gotham said he was a basketball junky and avid fan of the Larry Bird Celtic Championship teams of ‘81, 84, and ‘86 growing up in nearby Milford, Massachusetts - and he gets it. 

In fact, he views his core responsibility as being a caretaker of that tradition within the organization and maintaining the ability to communicate that civic Celtic’s Pride to the fans in-house and across the broad spectrum of digital, social media, streaming, and internet landscape that the modern business of professional sports demands.

With his technology and marketing background, Rich helped take the business side of the Celtics from “a mom and pop operation,” as he found it in 2003 (gross revenues of $104 million), and catapult it into the multifaceted $458 million sports behemoth it is today. 

On a recent podcast, “The Learning Leader” with Ryan Hawk, Rich Gotham’s job description included:

“Responsible for all aspects of the Celtics business operations, including sales, marketing, customer service, corporate partnerships, business development, game entertainment, community engagement, communications,  public relations, broadcast partnerships, arena relations, and real estate matters.”

“In addition, he works closely with Celtics ownership, basketball operations staff, and the NBA on basketball-related matters, as well as team and league initiatives.”

Phew! Is that all?

One of the interesting challenges that he and his team has met head on is the fact that research has shown that according to their home website “CelticLife.com” “90% of Gen Z (14-29) fans prefer to use social media to watch sports instead of traditional broadcasts. 

"To meet this trend, the Celtics have adapted their marketing strategies to appeal to these segments. Rich Gotham is at the forefront of all that, along with an in-house digital media unit dedicated to producing world-class content that improves the fan experience.”

Rich’s knowledge and experience in the tech space have been instrumental in the Celtics achieving a wide reach in this social media world, as the same home website informs you that the Celtics count about 24 million followers, with about 49% of them surprisingly being International.

And just for good measure, I’ll throw in the fact that in 2024, Rich was the Executive Producer for the HBO Max Docuseries, “Celtics City.”

One of the reasons for his effectiveness is that he identifies himself as a fan, “It's bigger than a sports team, it’s Civic Pride...you’re born into it, it’s in your blood - and it’s across all walks of life. The goal is for the fans to share that, and I try to instill that in the people who work here."

"It's part of the culture - It's different here."

Rich also relayed the fact that they still try to instill in the new players WHY - “It’s different here.” 

Another interesting thing Rich said was that when you lose, you have to feel the same pain as the fans and that the media is "not always the same as the fans...you have to be tuned into that.”

He stated that the passion of the fans brings pressure, but it's a lot better than indifference! 

Rich inhabits a key nexus point between ownership, the business operations, and the product that enters the arena to compete - the players, coaches, and support staff. That’s why he has two different offices - one downtown by the Garden and another at the new practice facility out in Brighton. 

Oh, and there is always one more thing that Rich Gotham was able to discuss with me. He was a key member of the sellers' negotiating team, resulting in the largest sale amount of a North American sports team in history. 

When I inquired, did even these great, latest revenue figures and financial statements for the last 22 years that you had to cobble together for the sale justify the $6.1 billion purchase price the new owner, Bill Chisholm, paid for the team? 

He said, “Well, it’s similar to buying oceanfront property or a great work of art. It's a one-of-a-kind, priceless asset that will only increase in value” - interesting! 

Whether you speak to the people in the Providence College administration who have dealt with him through the years (Rich was on the Board of PC from 2015-2024), or people who have worked with him for many years with the Celtics, it's always consistent in their characterizations - high character, low ego.

“I want the Celtics to be an organization of people who care, whatever it is you’re doing for the organization. I really want you to care about it”, Gotham said. "That is what Celtic Pride is about…and I can’t expect that of other people if they can’t see it from me” - Kristen Walsh, March 5 2024, Bentley University, report on a symposium with Bentley Pres. E. LaBrent Chrite.

What a great combination of personalities and skill sets Rich Gotham and Danny Ainge (hired right after Gotham in May of 2003) turned out to be - and, again, kudos to Grousbeck for that assemblage, which later came to include Brad Stevens and, most recently, our own Joe Mazzulla. 

Gotham was there for all of the most dramatic dealings:

- The 2007 Draft night trade for Ray Allen
- The July 2007 trade for Kevin Garnett 
- Placing them with Paul Pierce, along with the prior drafting of Rajon Rondo in 2006, set the stage for their Championship run in 2008

And the brilliant 2013 trade with the Nets (involving Kevin Garnett, 37, and Paul Pierce, 36), which set up the Celtics with the draft picks necessary to eventually draft Jaylen Brown (2016) and Jayson Tatum (2017), leading to the 2024 Championship and contributing mightily to the Celtics’ current relevancy. 

The business side, including the “cap” specialists, is all there for these deals to happen in the present time. There is a business strategy that’s always a part of the decision-making process, with the owners, of course, having the final say.

I know a lot of people know who Rich Gotham is, and that he’ll get a nice round of applause when, on Sunday, he rises to accept his honorary Doctor of Business Administration Degree.

But as amazing as it is that he’s not more of a household name with all that he’s accomplished, and by the nature of his title, in another sense, it totally is understandable. 

It’s because he walks the walk of what is required of his mission and mindset. Rich Gotham embodies what the true Celtic ethos is, as established by Red Auerbach from its inception 

- Play as hard and as unselfishly as possible. It’s never about you, it’s about the Team. 

- Place your effort into all the little things that others might not notice, but do contribute to the win. 

- Winning is all that matters.

After our conversation, and due to the fact that the occasion involves an academic commencement event, and in deference to my great English professors at Providence College from back in the day, the second stanza from a great Emily Dickinson poem - “Nobody” - came to mind:

“How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!”

You get the impression that, unlike a lot of people in an age of intense hype and self-promotion, Rich Gotham feels little need to be the center of attention. He’ll never be that frog bleating by an admiring bog.

His beautifully simple advice to young people:

“Most of your opportunities in your career are going to come as a result of someone else saying something good about you.” 

It certainly worked for him.