A Hoopster at Heart : Susan O’Malley, the NBA’s Only Woman President, Pumps Up the Fans With Her Drive to Win

It’s draft day in the National Basketball Assn., and the Washington Bullets have invited 2,000 of their fans to the Capital Centre to catch the action.

Season ticket holders get a bag of Bullets goodies and are treated to a sit-down dinner of pizza, crazy bread, salad and soda. There’s a guy with a karaoke setup entertaining fans in the main arena, and a doo-wop group singing on the concourse. A sports talk-show host is interviewing notables at center court. And when the draft begins at 7:30 p.m., everyone will be able to watch it on a giant-screen TV via a live satellite feed from Portland, Ore.

In the midst of all this, Bullets President Susan O’Malley is doing her thing.

“Hi, how ya doin’? Glad ya could come. Are ya havin’ a good time? . . . Hey, is this pizza great, or what?”

She’s meeting and greeting, pressing the flesh. She’s talking hoops, dispensing inside info, doing the yadayada. She’s out there chugging away with the contagious energy of Popeye after a spinach fix, letting everyone know the Bullets Care About You.

“Look at this hat! What is this?” says O’Malley good-naturedly to a young boy who’s shown up sporting a Charlotte Hornets cap. She grabs the hat off his head, and as the kid giggles helplessly, turns it inside out so the logo won’t show.

Hey, is this woman a pistol or what?

At 30, Susan O’Malley is the youngest president in the NBA--and the only female president.

She is talking to Wes Unseld, the Bullets coach and a NBA Hall of Famer. Unseld is the biggest 6-foot-7 you’ve ever seen, a monster wide-body. He’s a sober-looking guy who likes to say outrageously funny things with a straight face. He and O’Malley couldn’t be less alike. She’s five feet tall and weighs 92 pounds. Naturally, they’re the best of friends.

O’Malley is the first to admit that her friendship with Unseld may have saved her career with the Bullets. And she’s quick to acknowledge that when she joined the team in 1986 as its director of advertising, a cloud of nepotism hung over her head.

O’Malley’s father, Peter, is a prominent Maryland lawyer and a longtime business associate of Abe Pollin, owner of the Bullets. Peter O’Malley even spent some time as president of the Washington Capitals, the hockey club owned by Pollin.

So when Susan O’Malley went to work for the Bullets--even though Abe Pollin had nothing to do with her hiring--people started to treat her funny. No one would eat lunch with her. They’d make such comments as: “Oh, don’t say that stuff in front of her, she’ll go run and tell her father.” One time, someone filled her convertible with trash.

Then Unseld took her under his very large wing. Unseld was a team vice president at the time, and, says O’Malley, “we began going to lunch a lot. So when he became head coach (in 1987), everything worked out so well, because we already had this great friendship.”

Says Unseld: “Why you wanna write a story about Susan? She’s just like her father, a pain in the ass.”

Says O’Malley: “Is Wes the funniest guy, or what?”

Actually, Unseld’s assessment may have some merit. O’Malley uses such terms as obsessed and driven to describe herself. She’s the kind of person who, on her 20th birthday, made a list of 10 goals she wanted to achieve in the next 10 years. She says she’s hit eight of them. She has a sports car, a townhouse and a job in pro sports--to name just three. She has another 10 goals for her 40th birthday, but she won’t reveal them.

“I think I’m an obsessive person,” says O’Malley. “I think I’m driven. It’s a fear of failure.”

Says Pollin: “She’s one of the most goal-oriented persons I’ve ever met. She’s tough, and everybody who works for her knows they have to work hard, or else they’ll be gone.”

O’Malley grew up as the middle of five children. She was always aggressive and loud, trying to assert herself. “When you end up in the middle spot,” she explains, “you’re considered too young to do certain things, and too old to do others.”

So O’Malley did everything she could. At Mt. St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Md., where she earned a degree in business and finance, she was “always involved--president of the student government association, president of my class, honor student.” At the ad agency she joined right out of college, she gained notice by landing an account with a major hotel chain.

And in her six years with the Bullets, where she’s moved through a series of jobs until being named president last year, she has taken a franchise that is struggling on the court (the team lost 57 of its 82 games this past season) and turned it into a major financial success.

O’Malley, who is responsible for the financial and promotional part of the business, has made the Bullets as aggressive as she is--”proactive,” as she puts it--hustling for every advantage the team can get.

Can’t sell a winning team? Sell the glamour of the NBA and the sport as an entertainment alternative. Having trouble getting your season ticket holders to renew for next year? Have your staff call every single one of them, find out what’s bugging them and fix it. Want to get the fans more involved in the game? Run all sorts of promotional and giveaway nights. Arrange a halftime half-court shootout--if the fan makes the shot, everyone in the arena gets a free submarine sandwich.

“Ever been there when it happens?” asks O’Malley. “Don’t the fans go crazy? They’re like yelping dogs!”

Results: Bullets attendance has increased by more than 25% since 1988; season ticket renewals have jumped from 60% to more than 90%; this year’s average attendance was the highest in 13 years, and the 16 sellouts this season were the most in the franchise’s history.

“She’s achieved everything she said she’d achieve,” says Pollin, “which has surprised me, because we haven’t achieved on the court, so her job is even harder.”

Here’s the thing about being the only woman president in the history of the NBA. Sometimes you’re mistaken for someone’s wife (she’s unmarried). If you’re in a room with the other 26 team presidents, you know you’ll be heard, but you’re very conscious of what you’re saying. And sometimes a player will call you up and ask about shower curtains.

“(Bullets forward) Tom Hammonds was moving into a new condo,” recalls O’Malley with a laugh, “and he calls me and says, ‘Do you know anything about shower curtains? Mine don’t seem to fit.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Tommy, if I was (Boston Celtics President) Red Auerbach, there’s no way you would call me about a shower curtain.’ ”

O’Malley has this woman thing in perspective. She doesn’t think it’s been all that tough in a man’s world, and she credits NBA Commissioner David Stern for creating a professional atmosphere.

“This is no longer the ex-jock (running) the business and player side,” she says. “Now you find business people on the business side, and player personnel people on the other side.”

Besides, everyone knows you do not mess with Susan O’Malley. She’s personable and a bundle of fun. But if you screw up, she gives you The Stare, the don’t-mess-with-me look that can bore through steel plate.

It is, in fact, the look she gives during last week’s NBA draft.

It’s 4 p.m., time for “tip-off”--sort of like a pep rally before camp color wars. Everyone gets together in a semi-circle in the Capital Centre concourse. They start clapping in unison as one staffer calls attendance and reads off job assignments. Then another staffer plays Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” on a boom box. As O’Malley dances to the music, he makes more announcements.

Now it’s O’Malley’s turn. She’s aware that the fans on call-in sports talk shows have made their draft choices known: They want USC guard Harold Miner or Maryland forward Walt Williams. She also knows that the team needs rebounding help and is leaning toward North Carolina State’s Tom Gugliotta, a premier boards man.

She’s anticipating an unpopular pick. It is, and the Bullets are booed when they finally pick Gugliotta.

The Stare switches on. “I want to remind you,” she says to her staff, “of a rule we have here, that we never speak ill of our team. We’re positive that Wes and John (Nash, the team’s vice president and general manager) are doing the right job, and we’ll be overly enthusiastic.”

The Stare switches off. Everyone puts their hands into a circle and begins chanting “number six, number six,” the order the team chooses in the draft. Then they begin clapping in unison, starting off slowly and gradually picking up the pace.

O’Malley joins in. Her face is beaming, her body radiates energy. She doesn’t come out and say it, but you know what she’s thinking:

“Hey. Is this the greatest job in the world, or what?”