The way Red McCombs operates, he darn well should be from Texas.
Multimillion-dollar decisions are no big deal to McCombs. After all, he once made a $28 million trans- action over the telephone.
During his three-year ownership of the Nuggets, McCombs wasn’t the type to dabble in small decisions.
Maybe the best example of his gunslinger style of running the Nuggets was when he agreed to sell the NBA franchise to Sidney Shlenker for $28 million over the phone, a decision he came to regret.
“I didn’t want to sell the Nuggets, and I look back now and think it was the worst thing I ever did,” McCombs said from his office in San Antonio. “Mayor (Federico) Peña asked me not to sell the team. My wife, Charline, got so angry at me it almost led to a divorce. She liked Denver, and I liked Denver.”
One word led to another in that fateful phone call after the 1984-85 season, and McCombs hung up having agreed to part with the team.
“Sidney said to me, ‘Big Red, I want to buy the Nuggets,’ ” McCombs recalled. “I told him I wanted to continue building the asset, but he asked what I would take for the team. I figured what I thought the franchise would be worth in three years, and I doubled it.”
Shlenker didn’t hesitate. His voice loud and clear over the phone, he told McCombs he would pay the $28 million in cash. That was Texas talk. The parties met at the Brown Palace Hotel the next day to sign the papers. By the time of the signing ceremony, McCombs was already regretting his move. It didn’t help that Nuggets coach Doug Moe accompanied him to the sale. Moe was at his conversational best as the two waited for an elevator.
“I think he said something like, ‘You’re the dumbest (blankety- blank) I’ve ever known,’ ” McCombs recalled.
McCombs’ ownership of the Nuggets began with a Texas-size splash as well.
After the 1983-84 season, he decided to shake up his basketball oper- ations department. He talked a reluctant Vince Boryla into jumping back into the president-general manager’s chair, a function he had filled when running the Utah Stars of the ABA. McCombs hoped that Carl Scheer would move from general manager to direct the marketing department. Scheer, though, balked and left the Nuggets.
“I knew that Vince wasn’t interested in getting back into basketball,” McCombs said. “I had to convince him that I wasn’t another wild Texan who didn’t know what he was doing. The more we talked, the more interested he got. He rode with me out to the airport, and when I got out of the car, he was telling me how we were going to make deals.”
McCombs had a plan to mount a marketing campaign that might mean trading Kiki Vandeweghe or Alex English, or both.
“I already had made a deal with Dan Issel so he could retire as a Nugget after the upcoming season,” McCombs said. “As for Kiki and Alex, I loved both of them, but I knew I had to have something to sell to the fans over the summer.”
Boryla was told to explore a trade, but not to bother the boss until he had a deal. McCombs wanted it done in 30 days.
On June 7, 1984, the Nuggets announced a trade that sent Vandeweghe to the Portland Trail Blazers for center Wayne Cooper, forward Calvin Natt, guard Fat Lever, a second-round draft pick in 1984 and a first-round pick in 1985.
“Kiki really helped Portland, and the players we got really helped us,” McCombs said. “I said right away that it wasn’t a trade, it was a happening. I’m surprised it isn’t mentioned more as one of the bigger trades ever made in the NBA.”
It was a Texas-style deal.
Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, 83, calls himself a sports entrepreneur. He has owned the Nuggets, the San Antonio Spurs and the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings. And he’s not done.He’s the leading investor in a proposed Formula One racing plant near Austin, Texas.
“Formula One racing is a killer attraction everywhere else in the world,” McCombs said. “With what we’re looking at in our project, I think it’s going to be a big draw.”
McCombs bio
Born: Oct. 19, 1927, in Spur, Texas
High school: Sundeen, in Corpus Christi, Texas
Colleges: Southwestern University, University of Texas
Family: Wife Charline, daughters Lynda, Marsha and Connie
Hobby: Sports junkie
Way to fame: Six-day workweek
