Hard work paid off

LAS VEGAS – At Emerson College, Mike Brown was always looming like a great shot-blocker at the rim. His demanding class was unavoidable. And the challenge of that class was understood campus wide.

Sam Presti knew he had to get through Brown’s law course to get through Emerson. And he had to do well enough in the class to maintain his captaincy of the basketball team.

Hank Smith, his basketball coach at the Division III school in Boston, demanded his captains keep a 3.0 grade-point average and Brown, who describes his teaching style as “from the time before old school,” was a definite threat. In this relaxed academic era, Brown still threw around C’s and D’s as if it were 1960 again.

“I have a reputation for being way past hard,” Brown wrote in an e-mail.

On the first day of class, Brown told his students his door was open four mornings a week. If they needed extra help, he was there for them.

Only one student took advantage of the offer. Sam Presti. Four days a week.

“He had knowledge and I thought I could learn,” Presti, the Sonics’ new general manager, said Saturday at breakfast in a Las Vegas casino hotel. “It developed that a lot of time I spent with him was about things other than class. As time went on, our conversations evolved into life issues and values issues and hoops.”

Brown was an academic anachronism, a fan of the basketball team who never gave those players a break. But he admired Presti’s hunger to learn. He looked forward to those morning visits.

He saw that special quality in Presti that, at age 30, has manifested itself into a meteoric rise in the NBA’s front offices.

“I really could not figure out why this man (Presti) kept taking my courses or where his future was headed,” wrote Brown, a teacher at Emerson for 38 years. “He was not my smartest student, but he was, and still is, the standard bearer for my hardest-working student.

“I made my law class hard for everyone, just so I could see who responded to the challenge. When he (Presti) came to my office the first time he asked me if I was serious when I said I was available four mornings a week. I said yes, and for the next two months he kept showing up.”

It would be easy to say Presti has been lucky. He has had the good fortune to be surrounded by great mentors who were generous with their time and insights. He was lucky to land a job in San Antonio at a time when the Spurs were becoming the role model for the league.

But Presti also is living proof of the value of hard work. He was given opportunities not because of who he knew, but because of how he worked. And when given those opportunities he went beyond the job description.

“This is how it’s supposed to happen,” said Smith by telephone from a basketball camp in New Jersey. “You get rewarded for your hard work. And Sam’s always worked tirelessly. It’s gratifying to see that someone with his work ethic gets what he deserves. I mean the hours he’s worked. I can’t tell you. I think there’s days when he doesn’t sleep.

“That’s what he was like with us. He was all about the work and the rest of the team was supposed to work just as hard to stay up with him. His work ethic was unmatched.”

Presti was uncomfortable at Saturday’s breakfast interview. He doesn’t like talking about himself. Several times he asked about the direction of the column, not because he was concerned about it being critical, but because he was concerned that it was all about him.

“He’s never wanted the spotlight,” Smith said. “He wants everything to be about the team. When we had problems on the team, he usually handled them behind the scenes. And he never came to me and said, ‘Hey, Coach, look what I did.’ He just took care of it.”

In 2001, after Emerson, Presti, who majored in communications, politics and law, was wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

The father of an Emerson teammate, who was the superintendent of schools in Aspen, invited him out for the summer. The father had a gym, and every summer San Antonio general manager R.C. Buford ran a basketball camp there.

Presti worked the camp and was so impressive, Buford offered him an internship with the Spurs.

“There’s no money in it,” Buford said. “And it’s not fun.”

It was an opportunity Presti worked into a career. He lived in the Spurs’ video room, piecing together very specific tapes and learning the game as he went. He made the job fun. He made the work rewarding.

“Sam’s a super-sharp guy,” said Spurs assistant coach Don Newman, who is coaching San Antonio’s NBA summer-league team. “When he came to San Antonio you could tell he was on the fast track. And hey, on draft night, I think he was a star. For him to walk in there and make some real tough changes, it takes a good general manager to make moves like that.”

In his first draft last month, Presti made the deal of the night, showing the courage his predecessors never had by trading Ray Allen to Boston for the future that includes point guard Delonte West and the multi-positional, 6-foot-9 Jeff Green.

“Obviously it was a very tough decision,” Presti said. “But it was a good experience. We want to build a team to last, and you have to believe in the process. You stick to it, even when things are tough.

“I talk about not skipping any steps. That’s the way it’s always been for me. I’m never down here, looking up there. That’s how I was as a player. I played the game possession by possession. I wasn’t good enough to play any other way. If I looked ahead, I would mess up.”

Interviewing Presti is a Socratic exercise. He asks as many questions as he answers.

He is curious and he is professorial. But, as his former coach says, Presti’s reserve shouldn’t be mistaken for timidity.

“Something changed in him at practice. With Sam, every practice was a war,” Smith said. “That’s the way it was. If you were hurt, unless you were seriously injured, he expected you to get up.

“There was no flash in his game. But he was, and is, very, very tough-minded. He came to practice every day ready to go. He set the tone. Won almost every wind sprint we ran. What you see with Sam is what you get.”

Presti is spending most of his time in Las Vegas watching tapes of last season’s Sonics games. That could be defined as cruel and unusual punishment. He calls it part of the job.

Watching tape is glamour-free and hard. No adoring crowds. No parades. No glory. It’s work, dreary, redundant work.

Which, as Hank Smith is fond of telling you, is what Sam Presti is about.