Winning while losing

Sporting News, The, March 28, 1994 by Bruce Schoenfeld

The president of the Washington Bullets unleashed a frightful aggregation of nearly two dozen professional and college mascots on 18,756 expectant fans one night. Susan O'Malley's promotion du jour was a fifth birthday party for the Bullets' own fur-covered, orange-colored creation, Hoops -- and her 16th sellout of what has been a thoroughly dismal season on the court.

As the Bullets, the only NBA team with a declining victory total in each of the past four seasons, limp toward their seventh consecutive losing season, the crowds get larger.

Consider these recent home dates:

* 15,330 to see the moribund Clippers.

* 13,117 for the worst-record Mavericks.

* 18,756 -- a sellout -- for the woeful Kings.

* 18,756 -- another sellout -- for the 76ers.

Whatever has been getting people out of their homes and through the nastiest East Coast winter in memory, it certainly isn't the promise of quality basketball.

Instead, on this particular Saturday, with the reeling Lakers in town, there are mansized dogs and birds roaming the court during a timeout, and someone dressed like a giant George Washington wielding a foam-rubber axe. Meanwhile, Homer the Brave, with his 12-inch mohawk, sashays past Rhonda, the Virginia Commonwealth Ram, and down an aisle. "Are they having fun out there or what?"

O'Malley says. She is, too: The sellout keeps the Bullets on record-attendance pace, and for once the team is winning.

They tell lawyers with precedent on their side to pound the precedent and those who don't have precedent to pound the table. What you see at USAir Arena on game night is the marketing equivalent of pounding the table.

"I don't care what the naysayers say," O'Malley insists from her front-and-center box seat. (No fancy corporate suite for O'Malley; she's keen to mix and mingle.) "I'm sitting here in front of (a sellout crowd), and my record is 19-31. Why else would you come to a Bullets-Lakers game on a Saturday night? The great fight for the (NBA lottery) ping-pong ball? I don't think so."

O'Malley, 32, happens to be the only female club president in the NBA, and the only one in professional sports who doesn't own the team. That novelty is good for a certain number of speaking engagements each year, but people don't buy tickets because of it.

More relevant to her success is an unorthodox management style. It combines the attention to detail of an engineer with the nurturing of a third-grade teacher, albeit one who makes you put on a dress or tie. "It sure works with me," says Jim Delaney, one of the fresh-faced marketers. "It's fun to come in every day. I think part of the secret is that the staff is so young. I'm not sure if the rah-rah approach would work with an older group."

Delaney has just emerged from the Tip-Off Meeting, which is what O'Malley calls the gathering she holds several hours before each home game. On this afternoon, an account manager named Scott Sawyer has devised a competition that enables anyone who wants a change of assignment -- from lobby duty to will call, for example -- provided he or she can identify a famous person from a photo. As a result, employees up to vice president shout "Sharon Stone!" and "The guy who plays Doogie Howser!" as game preparation.

But O'Malley isn't done. When the meeting ends, she gathers her team -- not her basketball team, but the sales staff, marketing and ticket people -- into a huddle for a pep cheer. It's a summer-camp mentality, but NBA staffs tend to be young, mostly because nobody with a mortgage could live on the pay scale. "1-2-3! Blowout!" they cheer, then break the circle. There's a carrot, too: If the Bullets sell out and win, the entire staff get to wear sneakers to work the following day.

"We have monthly staff meetings," says Rhonda Ballute, the senior director of client services and one of the few Bullets employees who has been around the building longer than O'Malley, "and she makes each one a big production. We play Wheel of Fortune, for example, and give away prizes." Ballute smiles and shakes her head at the turn her career has taken. "Susan really is the most unbelievably hands-on person I've ever seen."

Some Bullets fans are wishing she'd take her hands off, especially after word leaked that the club was looking to change its logo and nickname. The Bullets contacted the NBA almost a year ago about changing their logo and colors for the '94-95 season. Considering that the club is last in the league in the sales of hats and replica jerseys, that wasn't a bad idea.

But Abe Pollin, who owns the Bullets, the NHL's Washington Capitals and the building both play in, recently began searching for a site for a new facility. He's looking everywhere from downtown Baltimore near Camden Yards to a northern Virginia complex built in conjunction with Redskins Owner Jack Kent Cooke, so the new logo has been put on hold pending a move. You would hardly want to be called the Washington Bullets, for example, if you were playing in Baltimore.

O'Malley is willing to change the nickname, even though the club's heritage dates, in indirect lineage, to the original Baltimore Bullets of the 1940s and '50s. Her position upset some people, including ex-Bullets Mike Riordan and Wes Unseld, the current coach who happens to be O'Malley's best friend. She isn't perturbed. And, truth be told, she didn't mind getting the club some free publicity.