What had been widely speculated broke officially Sunday night. As first reported by Marc Stein of ESPN.com, former NBA player agent and Sacramento Kings executive Jason Levien, who had been acting as a representative for prospective Grizzlies owner Robert Pera for the past several months, has been named to the top post in the new Grizzlies organization.
Levien will be named Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner of Memphis Basketball, LLC (the new name for the Grizzlies’ governing organization, replacing the previous Hoops LLP), overseeing both the business and basketball sides of the organization and reporting directly to new controlling owner and board chairman Pera. There’s no exact precedent for this in Grizzlies history. Think of Levien as some union of Jerry West, Andy Dolich, and Michael Heisley right-hand man Stan Meadows. In other words, he now has more organizational power than any non-owner in franchise history. (For an inside look on how Levien’s tenure with the Kings came to an end, check out this breakdown from friend of the blog Tom Ziller.)
Pera and Levien met with members of the Commercial Appeal on Sunday, but as of Friday, representatives of the new ownership group had not been on the scene, according to multiple Grizzlies sources, and current staffers seemed uncertain about the degree of change that was looming.
The plan, apparently, is for Pera and/or his representatives to meet with team employees early this morning, ahead of the 10 a.m. public press conference to follow. As one Grizzlies employee joked, “Hopefully you won’t see a line of us walking out with pink slips when you show up.”
