Slam Dunk.

The Boston Celtics' Joe DiLorenzo is one team member you might not have heard about. But he knows sports finance from the bottom up and inside out.

Joe DiLorenzo has always been on the ball. When he was a teenager in Medford, Mass., the president of Boston Garden lived around the corner, and offered jobs to the neighborhood kids for spending money. That's how DiLorenzo, now senior vice president of administration for the Boston Celtics, got started - he sold refreshments on commission at Garden events throughout high school.

His father died just before he was to start classes at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., so he kept on selling while he studied for a degree in accounting. But talent is as important behind the scenes as it is in the arena, and he soon was promoted to an office position that included nightly cash balancing. He also was elected union steward of United Clerks International Local 1445 (now known as the United Food Workers Union) from 1974 to 1977 and negotiated two, three-year collective bargaining agreements for approximately 150 employees.

In 1977, the same year he received his B.S. in accounting with a minor in business education, DiLorenzo moved up again, to assistant manager and cashier of the Boston Garden ticket office. By 1982, he was managing director of the ticket office, reporting directly to the president and responsible for $40 million in ticket inventories. His duties included supervising union and nonunion personnel, solving technical problems associated with the production of live entertainment and making decisions involving Boston Garden and outside promoters.

"I went from the bottom up," DiLorenzo jokes. "Then one day I heard the Celtics were looking for a controller. I had the job within about 15 hours of finding out about the opening." Less than four years later, he was named vice president of finance and CFO for the Celtics. In 1995, in addition to being CFO, he was appointed vice president of finance and administration. Then, in August 1996, he became senior vice president of administration. "I have a job I absolutely love," he says.

The Sporting Life

The Celtics, one of the original NBA franchises, were founded in 1946. They've won 16 NBA championships, more than any other pro team in the last 50 years. And the team's annals boast basketball legends like "Red" Auerbach, Bob Cousy, Tommy Heinsohn, Bill Russell and Larry Bird. But times have changed since DiLorenzo peddled popcorn.

"When I started out, most sports teams were considered hobbies for affluent people," he says. "But they're not a hobby any more. There's much too much money involved to just play around. It's clearly big business."

The Celtics were the first team to go public (the symbol, on the New York Stock Exchange, is BOS), and until 1997 were the only team with that distinction. The IPO occurred in 1986, when DiLorenzo was CFO. "Most sports teams run very lean organizations, so everybody chipped in to do the dirty work," he remembers. "A consultant and I spent about nine months working on the IPO."

What happened, DiLorenzo remembers, was that "Smith Barney approached the NBA for a group of five teams to go public. That would have been a conflict of interest because of the competitive nature of pro sports. But we determined that we had enough cash flow to do it on our own."

The IPO raised $48 million by selling 40 percent of the team as a publicly traded partnership, with a market valuation of $120 million, excluding real estate. This was at a time when the highest valued professional sports franchises - the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers - were valued at $60 million, including real estate. But it was like no other IPO in the world. For example, "We immediately were deluged with individuals trying to buy from one unit to 10 units," DiLorenzo says. "Eighty-nine percent of the stockholders had less than 10 units." He remembers the time he saw a headline in the Boston Globe, "Celtics Owner Gets Married at Blarney Stone." The name of the alleged owner didn't ring any bells, until DiLorenzo looked him up in the computer. "He owned two units," DiLorenzo chuckles.

"It was a nightmare to track on a monthly basis," he adds. "And the Boston press thought it was a pet-rock scam, but the numbers were there. It was made up of partnership units vs. stock, so it was a misunderstood investment. There were no annual meetings, no management say by any of the partners. We didn't want someone with deep pockets to try to change the management structure of the team." Still, a piece of a pro team is a great souvenir, and some shareholders have felt entitled to make weird requests for other memorabilia. "Partners have asked for Larry Bird's used shoelaces, and this and that," DiLorenzo says.

Lights, Camera, Action

Media coverage is critical to a team's success. "Usually it's the station that buys the team," he notes. But in 1989 he and the team's IPO consultant represented the Celtics' interests in purchasing WFXT-TV, the Fox Network station in Boston, for a $10 million note, and radio station WEEI in Boston. He negotiated the initial loan agreements to acquire the stations and provide working capital, negotiated the lease and acted as the construction representative when a new television station was built in Dedham, Mass., in 1991. He also provided cash management and unitholder-relations services for the communications partnership.

The next year, DiLorenzo was involved when the two stations were spun off, to the Boston Celtics Communications Limited Partnership. (The TV station was later sold for $105 million and relief of the note. In 1993, the company reorganized and repurchased the stations.) In addition, he negotiated the broadcast rights for the NHL's Boston Bruins for WEEI in 1990.

Surprisingly, the Celtics don't own their own logo - for uniformity of use, the NBA owns team logos. Therefore, the team doesn't keep 100 percent of the profits from the sale of team-related merchandise. "The sports merchandise is owned by NBA Properties," DiLorenzo explains. "We share 1/29 of all revenue generated by NBA Properties." Ticket sales, broadcast revenue, advertising and the potential windfall that accrues if the team makes the play-offs are other sources of income. Thus, DiLorenzo is always looking for innovative ways to increase profits. "You try to brand existing or future sponsors in a way that can benefit you also," he says.

That's how the team got its brand new, 140,000-square foot training facility in Waltham, Mass. For 12 years, New England Baptist Hospital has provided the Celtics with health care and injury management. Through that relationship, about three years ago, New England Baptist (in conjunction with its parent, CareGroup HealthCare System, a consortium of six area hospitals) and the Celtics began collaborating to build a health and wellness center that would function as the team's training facility and offer services to the surrounding community. And in a new sponsorship deal, the building, which opened in the spring of 1999, was named The Sports Authority Training Center in October.

"The team uses a 22,000-square foot, NBA-best training facility exclusively, effectively rent-free, as part of the complex," DiLorenzo explains. "The Celtics also receive 20 percent of all NBA-related revenue from the retail shop, along with the ability to sell advertising and naming rights. The value to the Celtics over the 12-year term of the agreement is immense. The additional revenues will enhance the limited revenues generated by being a tenant in the FleetCenter, where the team plays. We went from a very small training facility at Brandeis University, with no office space, to a huge, state-of-the-art, world-class facility that will let us attract and keep free agents."

The Home Team

DiLorenzo lives in Humarock Beach, halfway between Boston and Cape Cod, with his wife, Martha, and two daughters, aged 13 and nine - basketball fans all. He attends every Celtics home game, is president of the Bentley College Alumni Association and is active in area civic and charitable organizations - including the boards of Boston's Community Work Services, Beth Israel - Deaconess Medical Center and New England Baptist Hospital. In addition, he's a national director at large for Financial Executives Institute, and immediate past president and current chair of the nominating committee of the Boston Chapter (which, at over 1,000 members, is FEI's largest).

"He's a lot of fun," says Boston Chapter President Morris McInnes, a professor at Suffolk University. "He's very low-key, with a nice, casual style of management. He puts a lot of trust into the people he works with and expects that they'll do their jobs. He's always supportive if they need help, advice or discussion."

"Joe is one of the nicest people I've ever met," adds Boston Chapter colleague F. Gorham Brigham, Jr. "He's kind, thoughtful and a very good businessman, as well as a strong leader who gets things done by consensus. Everybody's crazy about Joe."

"I have a job most people would just dream of," DiLorenzo concludes. "The owners are pro-active and unique in allowing for great opportunities. And there's nothing like the excitement of being with a sports team and its networking capabilities and entertainment value."

DiLorenzo's Full-Court Press

Career trajectory: From pushing Coke at Boston Garden while a teenager to SVP of administration for the Boston Celtics in 28 years.

Deals: Everything from IPOs to state-of-the-art TV studios to Larry Bird's used shoelaces.

CFO tenure: From 1986-1996, responsible for Celtics' finance, forecasting and cash management, including generation of comprehensive, long-term accrual and cash-based forecasts and present value analysis to ownership and its lenders.

Current responsibilities: Administration, business development, community relations, marketing concepts, negotiations.

Best perk: Cheers at every Celtics home game.