NEW YORK — Peter Feigin has been walking for a block through midtown Manhattan, trying to find a place to sit and do this interview, when finally he eyes a quiet table. It’s on the street, right on Broadway and the corner of 49th street, outside a Junior’s Cheesecake franchise. It’s a little brisk outside and there is the usual white noise of New York but it’s an apt place to sit down and talk with the Bucks president. With Times Square in the background, and fresh off a panel appearance at the Octagon Sports Marketing Symposium minutes earlier, Feigin took the time to talk to The Athletic about the Bucks.
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We sat down for 15 minutes at one of the many red steel tables dotting Broadway and discussed the many issues pertinent to Milwaukee right now. The Bucks just opened up a new arena, Fiserv Forum, and are one of the league’s hottest teams. But the conversation didn’t stay in the present. Feigin discussed how the arena got built, how firing Jason Kidd moved the organization off its timetable, how the Bucks recruited Mike Budenholzer to be the new coach, and how close the franchise came to leaving Milwaukee. Oh, and, of course, there was some talk about New York and the Knicks.
I think the Bucks right now are one of the teams that are part of the NBA zeitgeist. You have Giannis. The only undefeated team (before they lost to the Boston Celtics on Thursday). What do you think the state of this team and this organization is right now?
I think we’re just beginning to make that evolutionary move to a very good, competitive, close-to-elite team in the NBA. It’s taken, probably, a year longer than we thought. But I think we’re on the precipice of really becoming a very good team.
Why a year longer than you thought? What was the original timetable?
I think if you asked us all internally, our expectations were not to be knocked after round one of the playoffs. At the end of the day we kind of measure ourselves where did we end up? We were kind of out after the first round of the playoffs last year, which was a disappointment.
Did you imagine last year going differently? Was that a setback having to fire Jason and then the playoff exit when it was?
I think, honestly, it was a pivot. It’s worked out well for us. But whenever you have to make changes, whenever you have to go off the plan, which you always have to do, it’s a little bit of a delay in forward progress. I don’t know if — it wasn’t really a setback, it was just more of a timing, “How do we continue to progress?” versus staying in neutral.
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Since you mentioned it, was that difficult to fire Jason? I know you guys were personally friends, right?
Oh, terrible. I love Jason. We became awfully close. I’m a huge fan of him, professionally and personally. But I think Jason’s obviously been around the business, kind of understands it and it’s a tough, results-oriented business. I think the organization was ready for a change.
I think Mike Budenholzer, this summer, you can argue was the most accomplished, best candidate on the market. You guys got him, obviously. What was the recruiting process, the hiring process for him like?
There was absolutely no way Mike didn’t know we were emphatic about wanting him as a coach. We contacted him directly, through some of his great contacts, made huge efforts not only to get him in and kind of explore our culture but to get him in front of our owners as quickly as we could and really start the process. We thought there was Mike and everybody else. If we could really get Mike, he was the “A” candidate, that would be a game-changer for us.
When you realized he was on the market and realize he was looking to leave Atlanta, when did you guys reach out and what’s the first pitch you make?
We reached out instantaneously. He had some — he was interviewing in the marketplace. We, of course, asked him to stop interviewing.
Did he?
He did not. But Jon Horst really spearheaded a real concise, smart strategic plan on how to bring them in, how to socialize us, and how to vet them through the organization, and in Mike’s case, a very short period of time.
It seems interesting, you mentioned what happened last year and now this year, just a stylistic change, the quality is drastically different. What did the club hope would happen when you hired Mike and how did that fit into the greater picture of the team?
Less on the basketball and more on here’s a guy who’s a leader, who’s a manager, who’s a teacher, who’s a developer. So you spend five minutes with Mike and whether he’s an NBA coach or a headmaster of a high school or a business leader, Mike is somebody who builds culture, has objectives, is about constant improvement, and is empathetic. I think that was such a great change for us. What makes Mike a great coach is he gives and cares everything about the players and about their development and winning. They get it and react to it. And he’s building like an organization, that’s based on improving every day.
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The big thing about the NBA now is that stars are so big and everyone wants to have one and make it known that they have one. From a marketing perspective, what has gone into making sure that people know about Giannis — aside from his play, obviously — and selling him and marketing him out there and making sure that he’s part of popular culture? Because this seems like the year he’s transcended a little bit.
I think it’s unbelievable transformation. We always said four years ago when ownership took over that we were going to go local, we were going to statewide, regional and national to do it. Then we had the Giannis effect and truly all of a sudden we had a surge of global awareness. Because Giannis in Europe, Giannis in Asia is one, two, or three of players that people watch, people consume, so we had to, interestingly enough, change it upside down and really focus on how do we focus Giannis locally? I think really, like, focusing on things like I think his kind of homecoming was an unbelievable 60 Minutes piece. I think he is charismatic enough and again everybody loses sight of a player’s age. This is a young guy. When you’re 22, 23 years old, because he’s still learning basketball. He’s now getting to the point where he wants to kind of expand. He understands what his brand is. He wants to be the leader and is a leader of a timing. That’s timing that made a big difference too. You don’t question, listen, our team will succeed a lot based on how successful Giannis is.
I’m sure it’s nice to have a guy like that when you open a new arena to have him as a selling point. So I was there last week. A really nice arena. I don’t need to tell you that. I’m sure you’ve heard it a lot from other people. When you’re figuring out how to build a new arena one of the things that’s always interested me is how do you decide how to make it from scratch? What is the process of deciding how it should feel like, look like, function like?
The only thing you do from 30,000 feet is you go to Kansas City to this pilgrimage where every stadium and arena architect is and you look at conceptuals. Kind of like any project, you buy into a concept. And it’s almost based on the exterior. Very little details on the interior. And then you don’t start anything from scratch. What we did was visit 20 arenas and stadiums. We took over 5,000 photos of like best practices, of like the way we like grounding to mirrors to showers to the way we like the retractable seating going in, and really by default get to create the greatest arena because you’re taking everybody’s best practices and really refining and are evolving. In the NBA it’s such a collaborative. Getting information from Sacramento, Orlando and Brooklyn, they actually want you to succeed operationally in the arena. We’re not competing against each other. Every best practice and every worst practice you kind of know as you’re building, which is a huge advantage.
So was your phone at one point just pictures of other arenas?
Still is. I share, as people renovate, as Atlanta looked to renovate I was sending Steve (Koonin) photos of everything. We always say, “How do we save each other like 1,000 hours?”
How do you sell an arena to the city, to the municipality? It seems like there was some initial resistance to give public funding for it, if I read correctly. There was a first vote no and you guys had an issue with that. What is the appetite for public funding and how did you guys sell it to Milwaukee and to the state?
We literally sold it on an economic return. To us the math made sense. If you got rid of an NBA team, just on the incremental income tax on a team over 10 years you would lose hundreds of millions of dollars, just alone on that. So we had an economic pitch. Then we really had the narrative of Milwaukee as a city and Wisconsin as a state and how imperative it is to not lose one of the 30 franchises of the NBA. What the NBA means on an international platform, a national platform, and what we were going to infuse in economic development and investment in the area. So it’s not just an arena. We acquired 32 contiguous acres. Our ownership has put in hundreds of millions beyond the arena and we’ve seen the returns already on just the tax increment on real estate. The whole new generation of arena development has really become district development. So how do you really think about it as “Build a moat around this great jewel of an arena with residential, commercial and retail?” And that’s kind of the model we took.
Was the prospect of losing Milwaukee as a team, how real was that? Or was that just a negotiating tactic?
No, I think it’s real. I think it was contractual. If our owners lost the team they’d have a resale.
If they didn’t get the arena?
If they didn’t get the arena, they lost the team. So they’d have to sell the team at no more than $25 million increase over the price. That was a real issue in the contract. Yeah, we have Seattle, we have Vegas, you have cities who would open their arms, fund, and love an NBA team. So I think it’s really real. By the way, and we’ve seen it in Seattle who’s trying to come back, the truth is once you lose an NBA, an NHL, an NFL team, you’re very challenged to ever conceive getting one back.
Because we hear that a lot, “If we don’t get a new arena, we’re gone.” I didn’t know how much was leverage and how much of that was actually on the table.
For us it was personal too. If we had to move we were no longer owning the team, so it was a big deal.
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Do you have a favorite section of the arena?
I love the Panorama Club. We have a club that can fit about 500 people up in the rafters, literally the catwalk. Which is a pretty fascinating kind of concept. Not too far removed from the Delta bridge at the Garden or what Miami’s done in certain places. But it’s open and it’s open to the public. The open concourses are just phenomenal. Throughout the entire arena wherever you are you’re part of the game, you’re part of the concert. You can hear it, you can see it, you can smell it. It’s a whole different feel.
I know you were asked about sports gambling at the panel but will you integrate gambling into the game experience in some way, in the arena in some way? I know it’s not legalized in Wisconsin yet but you said there’s a bill going through the statehouse.
No, legislation is starting to form. I think in the years to come it’s all mobile gambling. To have second device literally placing instantaneous bets and wagers on anything that happens in the game is going to be reality. And it will be a part of the live experience, no question.
Are we going to get outlets at every seat so people can just charge their phones and gamble as they go?
When you design an arena you are looking at outlets, looking USB ports, you’re looking at charging pads like you’ve never before.
Every story I’ve seen you’re described as the New York guy. As this New Yorker almost dropped into Milwaukee and the Midwest. Why do you think that is? How much is New York a part of who you are and your background?
It’s a big part. I think there’s a piece — I almost call it pace and energy. Maybe the Midwest is a little more passive in business activity and there’s little impulsion. I’m very impulsive. I’m very I’d almost say borderline aggressive in wanting to get things done and that’s culturally just different. I think it’s maybe your mindsets versus the kind of New York. Like I said we are a motivated, aggressive group to go after our objectives, to grow our business, to win a championship, and that’s kind of a — I wouldn’t call it like a cultural clash but it’s much different than like your normal kind of Wisconsite to do it.
I’ve read up a little bit and it seems like you pissed a few people off initially.
Well, I think the other thing is being straightforward and being direct and saying things is just a different mode. The great thing our owners, who have the gift of managing me have been beyond supportive and we all are on the same page to really go forward. So culturally it’s a beyond-supportive environment to kind of be direct, be aggressive, be motivated. Those are all good characteristics.
Last thing. I know you were with the Knicks for five years, I think, 1999-2004. That was their last sustained period of success. What was it like working at the organization at that time and being at The Garden when they were good?
It was such a five-year dichotomy. I got a job, was hired by Ernie Grunfeld — who is one of my childhood, if you’re a Knicks fan growing up in the ’80s you watched Ernie play. I had an office about 20 feet away from him. Willis Reed was next door. I was 20-something years old. It was so great. And we had a strike-shortened season in ‘99. So in a five year short period I kind of ended up focusing my first six-to-eight months on the Liberty, which was a new team, a launching team. We had the All-Star Game of the WNBA in New York. Then we quickly in succession we had such dramatic changes in leadership over five years. We made the NBA Finals against the Spurs, which was like the highest high, in the first 12 months, and then success on the court went down quickly. Our leadership changed from Ernie to Scott Layden. Steve Mills came in, and then Isiah Thomas. I would probably say not an era of real consistency to go through.
Hasn’t been that way since. It’s been a little choppy. That’s all I got unless you have a restaurant you want to volunteer as the one you always hit when you come to New York?
Maison Pickle. Big fan on the Upper West Side.
(Top photo: Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via USA TODAY NETWORK)