Alumni: Mills '81 goes from Jadwin to the Garden

When Mills graduated from Princeton, he did not see himself becoming involved with the business of sports. A sociology major, he had initially planned to go into banking.

“I didn’t really know that it was possible to have jobs in sports other than playing,” Mills said. “I think I was just in the right place at the right time.”

After graduating, Mills got a job at Chemical Bank — now JPMorgan Chase — but deferred for a year to play a season of professional basketball in Ecuador. Not long after starting his banking job, he landed an entry-level position in the NBA’s corporate sponsorship department. He spent much of the 1980s working his way up the NBA administration. In 1989, he finally became vice president of special events.

“People have to go into any job in sports understanding that you’re really going to have to work your way up from the bottom and that there may be times when you’re doing things that make you think, ‘Wow, I didn’t go to Princeton to do this,’ ” Mills said. “You’re going to have to make those kinds of sacrifices, but in the long run they will pay off.”

Mills’ first big break came not long after he joined the special events team. In 1989, the International Basketball Federation, abbreviated FIBA, announced that it would allow professional basketball players to compete in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Mills — who also served on the board of directors for USA Basketball — began selecting members of what later became known as the original Dream Team. He helped choose players such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, who would eventually go on to win a gold medal.

Mills also collaborated on the marketing, training and accommodations for the team.

Another one of Mills’ vital contributions to American basketball came in the mid-1990s, almost unintentionally. While working in the NBA Commissioner’s Office, Commissioner David Stern ask Mills to create a summer league to rival the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association. But midway through the project, the group, working with current WNBA president Val Ackerman, decided to change course.

“We were also looking at how excited people were getting about women’s basketball, and we said that we should also look at the creation of a women’s league,” Mills said. “We used the template for the creation of the men’s league for the formation of the WNBA.”

The men’s league for which Mills had laid down the foundation ultimately became the NBA Development League, a minor league farm system consisting of 16 teams.

After leaving the NBA, Mills began working at Madison Square Garden in 1999. He first served as vice president for the New York Knicks and later as president of MSG sports.

Since leaving the Garden in 2009, he has returned to the field of finance to work on wealth management for athletes.

“There are so many horror stories about what happens to professional athletes,” Mills said, adding that 60 percent of professional athletes are bankrupt just five to six years after ending their careers. “In many cases, it is a very preventable scenario.”

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Mills first worked as a consultant to longtime friend Magic Johnson at Magic Johnson Enterprises, a wealth management firm focusing on athletes and entertainers. He is currently the founding chief executive of Athletes and Entertainers Wealth Management Group, a New York City-based firm.

Mills is also an active member of the Princeton alumni community. He serves on the Connect initiative, a branch of the Aspire fundraising campaign focused on black alumni. He also helps mentor current basketball players and recruit athletes to Princeton.

Additionally, Mills helped teach FRS 157: Dilemmas in Intercollegiate and Professional Athletics with Wilson School lecturer Harold Feiveson GS ’72 last year. And he comes to games whenever he can.

“I love to come back, I love to be around the guys. It reminds me of what my experiences were at that point of time when I was playing,” Mills said. “It allows me to reinforce to the players I interact with and the people I interact with how fortunate any of us are to have to opportunity to play basketball at Princeton.”

Mills said that as long as Princeton students are comfortable with starting off on the bottom, sports management is an excellent career choice for those interested.

“Student-athletes at Princeton and students at Princeton have the right mix that people in the sports field are looking for,” Mills said. “They look for people that understand the competitive nature that’s so inherent in sports but also people that come with impeccable educational credentials.”

Mills has retained that “competitive nature” even 30 years after taking off his uniform for the last time. When asked what the hypothetical outcome of a contest between his Ivy League Championship team and this year’s Ivy League Championship team would be, he paused and thought for a moment.

“It would be a good game,” he said, chuckling. “It would be a very good game.”