12/11/21 - Weekend Listening from Intercontinental Exchange
Our guest this week: Dan Shaughnessy, author of Wish It Lasted Forever
This was a week of transitions, at ICE and elsewhere.
At the Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), Bob Iger used his final weeks as Chairman to return to his roots as a KABC weatherman, a job he did an Ithaca, N.Y. station 48 years ago. In the same news cycle, Iger’s successor as CEO, Bob Chapek, tapped my old friend Geoff Morrell as the company’s new Chief Corporate Affairs Officer.
Earlier in his career, Geoff served as Pentagon spokesman under Sec. Robert Gates. For the last 10 years, he’s held the top public affairs job at BP (NYSE: BP). Now he’ll lead Disney’s 500-person global media relations team.
All that PR comes from a 98-year-old company that makes movies, owns a streaming service and TV stations, operates theme parks and cruise ships, and delivers the world a ton of sports through ESPN.
One of ESPN’s biggest days of the year is two weeks from today, the traditional “NBA on Christmas Day” marathon. The twelve-hour juggernaut features five successive powerhouse matchups to celebrate the league’s 75th Anniversary season. The day begins with the Hawks at the Knicks at noon ET and ends with the Mavericks at the Jazz at 10:30 p.m. ET. That’s a generous serving of hoops to satiate the growing global appetite for the game.
The league, now dominated by Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo, has come a long way from its first game on November 1, 1946 between the New York Knickerbockers and the Toronto Huskies. Back then, Leo Gottlieb led the Knicks with 14 points in a 68-66 squeaker before 7,000 fans at Maple Leaf Gardens.
A turning point for this marketing machine was the 1979-1980 season, when Larry Joe Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson first suited up, respectively, for the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers. Between the two of them, Larry and Magic led their teams to eight NBA Championships. The Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy had a front row seat for that transformative era, which Dan and I reflected on in our conversation this week.
The view from courtside at the Boston Garden:
The Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy on the (NYSE Listed) Celtics of the Larry Bird Era There was a time when you could buy a share of the Boston Celtics on the New York Stock Exchange during the daylight trading hours, then watch Larry Bird dismantle NBA opponents at the Boston Garden with his devastating jump shot and pinpoint passing by night. Legendary columnist Dan Shaughnessy brings the era back to life in his latest book, Wish It Lasted Forever: Life with the Larry Bird Celtics, his buzzer-beating, game-winning memoir of his time covering the team’s climb to dominance in the 1980s.
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