This is the second of a five-part series chronicling the Dallas Mavericks’ 1980-81 season, their first in the NBA. Today: Norm Sonju. Sunday: Rick Sund.
When it came to building the Dallas Mavericks brick by brick from the ground up, one of the team’s co-founders, Norm Sonju, was the ultimate multi-tasker.
Back in the late 1970’s and early in 1980 when the foundation was being laid to help make the Mavs become the NBA’s 23rd franchise, it was as if Sonju was in 10 places at the same time. When he wasn’t rounding up investors or negotiating a deal, Sonju was busy putting out fires left and right that culminated with the Mavs being awarded an expansion franchise on May 1, 1980.
Those who were around Dallas some 40 years ago and had close ties to the inner workings of the Mavs earning NBA status laud the tedious work of Sonju. And one person who was shoulder-to-shoulder with Sonju and saw things evolve first-hand was Rick Sund, the first Mavs’ employee Sonju hired and the team’s original director of player personnel.
What Sund saw in Sonju was a man on a mission, a man totally determined to bring the NBA to Dallas.
“One of the things that I think is kind of interesting is Norm Sonju sometimes doesn’t get the credit he deserves, because it was his idea (to bring an NBA franchise to Dallas), and it was all his work to bring Don Carter and other investors in to deal with the league, to deal with the city of Dallas, and to get Reunion Arena built,” Sund said. “I was very, very happy for him, and obviously I was very, very happy for Don Carter, because he handled all of the finances.
“So, May 1, 1980 was a big day.”
Indeed, the weight of the world was lifted off Sonju’s shoulders when his dream of bringing an NBA franchise to Dallas was officially official.
Sonju told Mavs.com, “That’s because I felt responsible for (NBA executive vice-president for business and legal affairs) David Stern, and I felt responsible for (NBA commissioner) Larry O’Brien.
“And I also felt responsible for Don Carter, and for my new young staff.”
Leading up to the day the Mavericks were finally in the NBA, Sonju had spent an inordinate amount of time securing investors. At one point he appeared to have the necessary financial backing needed to bring a team to Dallas.
But a major problem occurred along the way as some investors got cold feet and decided to jump ship, which nearly harpooned the entire project.
“In April of 1980 interest rates were 21.5 percent, so that’s why a lot of partners started to drop out,” Sonju said. “I had started to put together a staff in case we got the team – and there was a good chance we didn’t get it. And then Mr. Carter’s company (Home Interiors and Gifts) stepped back in during April of 1980, and his company had the financial wherewithal to invest at the very time when many of my partners were dropping out.
“Praise the Lord that Mr. Carter came back in. When we started the team it was my dream, obviously. Don was trying to do it independently, then he and I hooked up and he became my hero because without Don we couldn’t have gotten the team.”
In conjunction with radio station WBAP, Sonju and Carter ran a three-week contest to come up with the name of Dallas’s NBA franchise. Of some 4,600 entries, the final three names seriously considered were Express, Mavericks and Wranglers.
“Don and I made the final, final decision – Mavericks – versus those other two,” Sonju said. “There were many, many others – Desperados and every kind of name you could imagine.
“But those are the three we looked at pretty seriously. We both liked the name Mavericks and we thought it was a great name.”
The development of the team’s logo was the brainchild of Sonju.
“I had an artist name Bill Winn of Stark Design Marketing, Inc., develop the logo, and Bill was phenomenal and he did a great job,” Sonju said “But it took me 77 revisions before I accepted the logo.”
Why so many revisions?
“I wanted a blue and a green, and the reasons why I wanted those colors was Reunion Arena was already being built,” Sonju said. “It was being built before we got the franchise, and the seats were blue and green.
“So, I wanted our logo and our team colors to capture the same blue and green. And I did that so it would look like we built the arena.”
From Sund’s perspective, Sonju was a burst of energy who couldn’t wait for his dream to become a reality. Meanwhile, Carter wound up guaranteeing the $12 million expansion entry fee.
“Norm was so busy it was unbelievable,” Sund said. “Don was very interested — he wanted to buy a team, buy it for his wife Linda. Linda really wanted the team, so Don bought it.
“Norm put together a whole bunch of investors – and Don was one of them. Don liked it, it was a good investment. Don was a great owner, he was a majority owner of the whole thing. So he and Norm and Doug Atkins, who was the legal attorney, kind of formed the threesome running the board side of it, and then Don became the majority owner.”
For his part, Sonju was detail-oriented and always wanted to make sure no stone was left unturned. He saw in many cases where the Cleveland Cavaliers morphed into being called the Cavs, and how the New York Knickerbockers are generally known as the Knicks, and he didn’t want the Mavericks to suffer such a shortage of their name.
“He wanted it to be called the Mavericks,” Sund said. “Just kind of a, ’Hey, we’re a little bit of a maverick type of team.’ So we were all instructed to, when we talked about them, to call them the Mavericks and not the Mavs.”
When was it kosher to also refer to the Mavericks as the Mavs?
“I don’t know,” Sund said. “I think writers probably had the influence on that because it was easy to write. But the emphasis is that Norm really wanted it to be called the Mavericks.”
Obviously Sonju had his reasons.
“We did not have the Mavs — we had the Dallas Mavericks,” he said. “And I worked real hard in the early years of protecting the name Mavericks, because I knew eventually it could be like the Cavs in Cleveland and the New York Knicks.
“So, candidly if you look at my whole era, all the years that I ran the team, you only saw Dallas Mavericks. You never saw any shorten name.”
Behind Sonju’s business acumen, the Mavericks were able to bring the NBA All-Star game to Reunion Arena on Feb. 9, 1986. Not bad for a franchise just six years into existence.
“What I remember mostly is just the excitement about being part of this new thing with this really talented group of great people to work with,” said Kevin Sullivan, who was hired on June 2, 1980 as the Mavs’ public relations assistant. “Norm did a phenomenal job of finding good people and getting them all pointed in the right direction.”
It was also a direction that throughout the 1980’s had those around the NBA referring to the Mavs as the model franchise, a tip of the hat to the exceptional job performed by Sonju.
Twitter: @DwainPrice
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