Avery Johnson — How "The Little General" Compounded Success From NBA Player to Coach to Private Equity Investor
The Game PlanShow Notes
As a point guard, Avery Johnson played in the NBA for 16 years. He achieved the pinnacle of success in 1999, winning the NBA title as the floor leader of the San Antonio Spurs.
In 2004, Johnson retired from the game and moved up the bench transitioning from active player to assistant coach. Shortly after his start in coaching, Johnson found success as a head coach, leading the Dallas Mavericks to the 2006 NBA Finals. That same year Johnson was rewarded with NBA Coach of the Year honors, and became the fastest NBA head coach to win 100 games. He would later go on to take head coaching roles with both the New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets and the University of Alabama. At each of those levels, Avery Johnson learned the key traits of resilience, perseverance, and effective management that serve him off the court today.
Today, “The Little General” has moved beyond coaching and into business as a successful real estate investor. In early 2020, Johnson formed Avery Capital where he focuses on investment opportunities exclusively tied to the General Services Administration or “GSA”; an independent government agency that manages federal property.
More from The Game Plan
Human beings have been collecting non-utilitarian items for millennia. It just so happens that with the advent of the digital age, we're now able to collect items from around the world and display them digitally for fellow collectors all over the world to admire as well. Add to this Digital Collectibles, like NFTs, and you've got a space ripe for tech innovation.
If you listen to this show regularly, you know that the shifting interest of athletes from endorsement to ownership is something we talk about a lot. Well, it turns out that in the last few years, athletes aren’t the only ones that are thinking about how to get ownership in the brands, companies and financial institutions they help build as early adopters, micro-influencers, or simply as customers.
In many ways, Bennie Fowler's story is the epitome of resilience and exactly the kind of journey we love sharing onThe Game Plan every week. Bennie had tremendous success in college at Michigan State and like many of his fellow players, expected to hear his name called during the NFL Draft. Unfortunately, that announcement never came.
Podcasting and social audio as a viable business has seen explosive growth in the past decade, the last few years especially. With Spotify having spent over $1Bn to acquire both tech and talent, apps like Clubhouse raising at multi-billion valuations, and even platforms like Twitter launching their own social audio Spaces, we felt this topic deserved a deeper dive.
In this week's episode of The Game Plan, we venture into the wild, wild west of the internet: Digital collectibles, NFTs and Web3. What does it mean for athletes, how is it changing how athletes think about their personal brands and ability to monetize their work on and off the field, and who the key stakeholders in this new tokenized world are and will be.