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The Bald Truth
Superagent David Falk -- the man who called the shots for some of the greatest heroes in the history of basketball -- reveals the innovative business secrets that catapulted him to the top of his game.
David Falk is the most successful agent in the game of basketball. He has represented more NBA first-round draft selections, lottery picks, Rookies-of-the-Year, and All-Stars than anyone else in the business. He changed the NBA's entire salary structure with a unique approach to negotiations that garnered some of the biggest contracts in league history, including Alonzo Mourning's $100-plus million contract with the Miami Heat -- the first ever in professional sports. His groundbreaking Nike deal for Michael Jordan, the most successful endorsement relationship in history, revolutionized basketball by creating the game's first commercial superstar.
Basketball Digest called Falk one of the sport's most influential people, second only to NBA commissioner David Stern. In The Bald Truth , Falk, respected throughout the industry as an innovator, candidly unveils the business secrets that have fueled his extraordinary success. For the first time, he shares the fascinating insider details of how he negotiated lucrative contracts, learned from his mistakes, and branded and marketed not only the greatest basketball stars in history but also other elite athletes and coaches.
Falk is blunt, he's fair, and he looks at the long run rather than the short-term gains. To make a great deal, he believes, both sides have to win. He adheres to steadfast principles, some of which he learned from the celebrated champion athletes and revered coaching legends -- like Georgetown's John Thompson and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski -- who have been long-standing clients and lifelong friends.
Since Falk began representing athletes more than thirty-five years ago, basketball has grown from a fledgling team sport to a multibilliondollar business with celebrity players, powerful endorsement deals, salary caps, and ever-evolving free agency rules. He has made millions of dollars for himself and his clients, but today he remains in the business for one love of the game -- on and off the court.
David Falk is the most successful agent in the game of basketball. He has represented more NBA first-round draft selections, lottery picks, Rookies-of-the-Year, and All-Stars than anyone else in the business. He changed the NBA's entire salary structure with a unique approach to negotiations that garnered some of the biggest contracts in league history, including Alonzo Mourning's $100-plus million contract with the Miami Heat -- the first ever in professional sports. His groundbreaking Nike deal for Michael Jordan, the most successful endorsement relationship in history, revolutionized basketball by creating the game's first commercial superstar.
Basketball Digest called Falk one of the sport's most influential people, second only to NBA commissioner David Stern. In The Bald Truth , Falk, respected throughout the industry as an innovator, candidly unveils the business secrets that have fueled his extraordinary success. For the first time, he shares the fascinating insider details of how he negotiated lucrative contracts, learned from his mistakes, and branded and marketed not only the greatest basketball stars in history but also other elite athletes and coaches.
Falk is blunt, he's fair, and he looks at the long run rather than the short-term gains. To make a great deal, he believes, both sides have to win. He adheres to steadfast principles, some of which he learned from the celebrated champion athletes and revered coaching legends -- like Georgetown's John Thompson and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski -- who have been long-standing clients and lifelong friends.
Since Falk began representing athletes more than thirty-five years ago, basketball has grown from a fledgling team sport to a multibilliondollar business with celebrity players, powerful endorsement deals, salary caps, and ever-evolving free agency rules. He has made millions of dollars for himself and his clients, but today he remains in the business for one love of the game -- on and off the court.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2009
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126 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 18, 2024
Great insight into the NBA world; the players, salaries/salary cap and the League as a whole. David gives an awesome depiction of what the CBA is all about between the NBA & NBPA. How contracts were negotiated, as well as how many errors and misjudgments were made along the way, Magic Johnson's 25 year/$1 million a year deal for example. Overall he gives good advice on business, deals and mindset one should have if you want to be in the right side of success. Let's not forget the many innovative contributions David has made advertently and inadvertently to NBA contracts(opt-out clause) and Rules (Rookie Wage Scale). A1 book in terms of sports business!
March 3, 2024
Great anecdotes, but also would have benefited from editing.
May 18, 2010
When I was in law school, my negotiations professor shared a story he attributed to David Falk, power agent of such high profile athletes as Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing and (alas) no relation of mine. Here’s the gist. A team owner notorious for dragging out negotiations through “gamesmanship” (e.g., by using questionable tactics like low-balling, employing distractions, and nibbling presumably for the sheer thrill of it all) asks Falk, to just this once cut-to-the-chase and give him a straight, fair market value assessment for a coveted player against which they can then strike an immediate deal. After a bit of probing and protest, a skeptical Falk obliges (“In this market, he’s worth $13M to you”), whereupon the untrustworthy owner immediately counters, “Well, I can only afford to pay three.”
How does Falk handle this? Does he argue strenuously in support of his original figure? Walk away? No, he tells the owner that if that’s the way it’s going to be, his opening position is $30M and he can call Falk’s assistant when he’s ready to get serious. It takes a summer’s worth of back-and-forth, but they end up settling at a contract valued at $18M, a full $5M *higher* than what the owner might have paid had he simply accepted Falk’s original, honestly-intended offer. Great story, the point of which was to underscore the effectiveness of a tit-for-tat negotiation strategy in the true game theory sense of the term. Since Falk recently published this memoir/business strategy book, I was curious to see whether I would find this anecdote within its pages.
Alas, though The Bald Truth is liberally sprinkled with post-negotiation gossip and salary cap snippets, my law professor’s apocrypha was nowhere to be found. This doesn’t invalidate the truth of the story – absence of evidence is not evidence of absence – but for me it means I ended up feeling obliged to read this largely worthless book cover to cover for nothing. Falk may be tremendously effective as an agent/negotiator, but in this instance as an author, he’s a bit disorganized, not at all introspective, and extremely repetitive. He abandons the memoir conceit fairly early on after glossing over his birth and childhood and then attempts to treat highlights from his dealmaking career as object lessons embodying unhelpful tactical precepts he summarizes after each chapter (e.g., “Business is not a popularity contest” at p. 97, “Goodwill cuts both ways” at p. 206, and Kenny Rogers’ riverboat gambler favorite, “Know when to hold… know when to fold… know when to walk away” at p. 283).
Some of Falk’s observations are self-contradictory. For example, late in the book he (sagely, I think) recommends that negotiators always argue from a conceptual foundation rather than seize on an arbitrary dollar figure (what Fisher & Ury in the classic and far superior treatment of the subject Getting to Yes would call arguing over principles, not positions) and provides a suitable example from his career by way of illustration. Then he turns around and relates how he was just as successful when selling his agency business in 1999, clinging to a price tag $20M in excess of the market value described by an independent, objective assessor from Goldman Sachs on the basis of a professed emotional attachment to the figure.
The anecdotes which punctuate this book can and should be read for their independent entertainment value since they are largely divorced from whatever points Falk thinks he wants to make. The book as a whole fails, however, since it is fleshed out by so much vague blather, much of which is completely incoherent. I’ll close with one of Falk’s pithier examples, this one from page 34:
How does Falk handle this? Does he argue strenuously in support of his original figure? Walk away? No, he tells the owner that if that’s the way it’s going to be, his opening position is $30M and he can call Falk’s assistant when he’s ready to get serious. It takes a summer’s worth of back-and-forth, but they end up settling at a contract valued at $18M, a full $5M *higher* than what the owner might have paid had he simply accepted Falk’s original, honestly-intended offer. Great story, the point of which was to underscore the effectiveness of a tit-for-tat negotiation strategy in the true game theory sense of the term. Since Falk recently published this memoir/business strategy book, I was curious to see whether I would find this anecdote within its pages.
Alas, though The Bald Truth is liberally sprinkled with post-negotiation gossip and salary cap snippets, my law professor’s apocrypha was nowhere to be found. This doesn’t invalidate the truth of the story – absence of evidence is not evidence of absence – but for me it means I ended up feeling obliged to read this largely worthless book cover to cover for nothing. Falk may be tremendously effective as an agent/negotiator, but in this instance as an author, he’s a bit disorganized, not at all introspective, and extremely repetitive. He abandons the memoir conceit fairly early on after glossing over his birth and childhood and then attempts to treat highlights from his dealmaking career as object lessons embodying unhelpful tactical precepts he summarizes after each chapter (e.g., “Business is not a popularity contest” at p. 97, “Goodwill cuts both ways” at p. 206, and Kenny Rogers’ riverboat gambler favorite, “Know when to hold… know when to fold… know when to walk away” at p. 283).
Some of Falk’s observations are self-contradictory. For example, late in the book he (sagely, I think) recommends that negotiators always argue from a conceptual foundation rather than seize on an arbitrary dollar figure (what Fisher & Ury in the classic and far superior treatment of the subject Getting to Yes would call arguing over principles, not positions) and provides a suitable example from his career by way of illustration. Then he turns around and relates how he was just as successful when selling his agency business in 1999, clinging to a price tag $20M in excess of the market value described by an independent, objective assessor from Goldman Sachs on the basis of a professed emotional attachment to the figure.
The anecdotes which punctuate this book can and should be read for their independent entertainment value since they are largely divorced from whatever points Falk thinks he wants to make. The book as a whole fails, however, since it is fleshed out by so much vague blather, much of which is completely incoherent. I’ll close with one of Falk’s pithier examples, this one from page 34:
Don’t try to be a spiritual advisor.Whatever that means.
A leopard doesn’t change its spots. People don’t change leopards.
April 30, 2009
I REALLY loved this book.
I learned a lot about representation in a tough industry like sports management. Its very similar, if not harder, than commercial real estate brokerage.
David had some great tips about negotiation that helped change my perspective. The most important was focusing on how much the product means to the customer. In this case, an nba draft player to a certain team in that certain year. A lot of agents were using last years prices as an index or comparable for the new year, but David was able to reframe the situation to get his draft picks the top dollar - well at least according to his book. hahha
If you are an NBA junkie and want to learn about what happens on the business side behind the scenes, you should definitely read this book. I was surprised to learn that not all the best players in the NBA made the most money. It just goes to show that there truely is value in representation.
I would definitely read this book again.
I learned a lot about representation in a tough industry like sports management. Its very similar, if not harder, than commercial real estate brokerage.
David had some great tips about negotiation that helped change my perspective. The most important was focusing on how much the product means to the customer. In this case, an nba draft player to a certain team in that certain year. A lot of agents were using last years prices as an index or comparable for the new year, but David was able to reframe the situation to get his draft picks the top dollar - well at least according to his book. hahha
If you are an NBA junkie and want to learn about what happens on the business side behind the scenes, you should definitely read this book. I was surprised to learn that not all the best players in the NBA made the most money. It just goes to show that there truely is value in representation.
I would definitely read this book again.
January 22, 2014
Had high hopes for this book but the thing is about him bragging about his accomplishments whereas everyone else screwed up. Big "ha-ha, f-you I made my money" to everyone who thought he was wrong. A lot repetitive events are brought up over and over again while he tries to impart "wisdom" to the reader. There doesn't seem to be any cohesiveness to the writing or any structure and at times he contradicts himself. When arguing about the league's minimum age requirement he talks about how "novices" and "apprentices" wouldn't be as skilled and shouldn't be allowed to replace veterans' jobs yet a few chapters later he says exactly the opposite.
Part self help, part auto biography, part bragging rights, but fails all together.
Part self help, part auto biography, part bragging rights, but fails all together.
January 8, 2012
This is a great book for anyone interested in finding out more about what goes on behind the scenes in sports contract negotiation rooms. David Falk has proven himself to be the best in the business of representing high-profile sports athletes in particular NBA players.
The author states his strategies for success in an easy to read fashion and follows it up with specific examples. It was after reading this book that I came to a much clearer understanding as to why we see certain players in the NBA ending up with such luxurious contracts while at the same time other talented players never truly realise their worth in the marketplace.
The author states his strategies for success in an easy to read fashion and follows it up with specific examples. It was after reading this book that I came to a much clearer understanding as to why we see certain players in the NBA ending up with such luxurious contracts while at the same time other talented players never truly realise their worth in the marketplace.
March 28, 2009
Useless, unless you are totally unfamiliar with popular advice. Falk recounts his career as an agent, which while prolific (see M. Jordan), was not that extensive since he defaulted to the usual profile of other writers with little to say - repetition. If you to read the same stories over and over that are used to highlight different points related to business, then read on. This is not to say that Falk has no insight; his points about negotiation and goodwill are well taken. However, a quick skim is all this book requires.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews