The Don

From the Phoenix New Times, here's Deborah Laake's 1993 profile of Jerry Colangelo:

Outside of Phoenix—although not all the way to Vatican City, perhaps—Colangelo is widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful and savvy sports executives alive. He is a man to know. His colleagues and admirers are unconcerned with the squeals of local taxpayers, many of whom perceive that Colangelo finagled them out of $238 million in taxes that they did not want to spend on a baseball stadium. No, a person who understands and appreciates Colangelo's accomplishments also knows that, in this new age of stadium-driven sports, there's not a gleaming new stadium anywhere in America, or one under construction, that wasn't, in some fashion, slammed down the throats of unwilling commoners who paid for it.

"It would not surprise me if, in order to get a stadium built, he has done whatever he had to do, short of breaking into people's houses and robbing them," says Jack McCallum, veteran writer for Sports Illustrated who covered the National Basketball Association from '85 through '93. "But he is a major, major player nationally. If [NBA Commissioner] David Sterntrusts five guys, Jerry Colangelo is one of them.

[Photo Via: Roadtrip Nation]