When the U.S. men’s basketball team lost to Argentina in the semifinals of the 2004 Olympics, many people were shocked and called for a change. A bronze medal didn’t seem right for a country that had been the best at the sport for so long. So, Jerry Colangelo took charge of the clean-up and rebuilding for the 2008 Olympics in China.
“The Redeem Team” on Netflix tells the story of how hard people worked to get ready for the 2008 games and how the men’s team, which included legends like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, pushed for the top prize. So, if you want to know how important Jerry was to this team and where he might be now, we have the answers.
What is Jerry Colangelo doing now?
Jerry Colangelo grew up in a working-class Italian-American family in the Chicago Heights neighborhood of Illinois. He would say in the future that his childhood had a big effect on the rest of his life. Jerry said, “I didn’t know my father at all. Never did we play catch. I never went to a game with him. Instead, I told him I would kill him because he had hurt my mother. My early years in the neighborhood, though, gave me a strong sense of family, hard work, and relationships.
After playing basketball in college, Jerry joined the Chicago Bulls in 1966 as their coach, scout, and director of marketing. He was the first person to make a deal with Converse and make promotional giveaways popular. Jerry said this about what makes him tick: “I’ve never had a real mentor, but I’ve relied on many people who have had a big impact on my life.”
Jerry was named the general manager of the Phoenix Suns for their first season in 1968, when he was only 28 years old. Jerry stayed with the team until 2012. He had many roles, such as head coach, president, managing general partner, CEO, and chairman. During his time with the team, Jerry won the NBA Executive of the Year award four times. Then, in 2005, he took over the men’s National Team Program. This was the start of a very successful time for the team.
Before Jerry took over, the team hadn’t won a big game since 2000. So, he got serious about rebuilding and chose players and a coach without a committee. Jerry said, “We went off the path. I didn’t like how people saw us as athletes and Americans. I tried to make a change. We had to change the way things were done and start over. I thought we had lost the respect of basketball fans all over the world. We could only get that money back by being polite and going about our business.
Jerry chose Mike Krzyzewski, the head coach at Duke University in North Carolina, to be the coach of the national team. He then put players on the team like Kobe, LeBron, Dwyane Wade, and Carmelo Anthony. The team won the 2008 Olympics and did the same thing three more times while Jerry was in charge. Seven out of the nine FIBA or FIBA Americas games were won by the team, giving it a strong overall record of 104-7.
Jerry was also successful in other sports. In 1998, he brought the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team in Major League Baseball, to the state of Arizona. A few years later, in 2001, the team beat the defending champion New York Yankees to win the World Series. In 2015, the Philadelphia 76ers chose Jerry to be their Chairman of Basketball Operations. He quit his job soon after, but he stayed on as a special advisor to the team’s owner.
Jerry has been inducted into both the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and the Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame. He is on the boards of a few different groups and has written two books. Jerry has been married to Joan since 1961. The two of them met on a blind date. The couple has four kids and ten grandchildren. Jerry is a main partner in JDM Partners LLC, an Arizona company that builds homes and other buildings.
Even though he sold the Suns and lost control of the Diamondbacks, Jerry is still active at age 82. He plays in charity golf tournaments and does other things. He said, “God has given me good health. Like everyone else, I’ve had some things along the way. I beat prostate cancer and a few other things, and now I’m very healthy and full of energy. I’ve always thought, “I’ll go as long and as hard as I can until I can’t.” Also, a basketball tournament for college students held every year is named after him.
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Early years
Colangelo was born and raised in the working-class neighborhood of Chicago Heights, Illinois, by an Italian-American family.
At Bloom Township High School, he played basketball and baseball. Colangelo started out at the University of Kansas, but after Wilt Chamberlain left, he moved to the University of Illinois. He played basketball for the Illinois Fighting Illini and was named to the All-Big Ten team. As a senior, he was also the team captain. The Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame later made him a member. Colangelo also played baseball at Illinois for two years. In 1962, he got a degree in physical education from the University of Illinois.
Colangelo talks about working at the House of Charles, a tuxedo rental shop in Chicago Heights, after he graduated from college in his autobiography, How You Play the Game.
Basketball
Colangelo’s first job in sports was with the Chicago Bulls, a pro basketball team, in 1966. He was in charge of marketing, looked for new players, and helped the team’s president. In 1968, he quit the Bulls and became the first general manager of the Phoenix Suns, a new team that had just joined the NBA. He was the sports league’s youngest general manager. He had $200 in his wallet when he and his family moved to Arizona.
Colangelo had a bad start. In 1969, the Milwaukee Bucks won a coin flip for the rights to UCLA star Lew Alcindor (who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). The Suns were good for most of the 1970s. In 1976, they made it to the NBA Finals, but lost in six games to the Boston Celtics. During that decade, Colangelo was the head coach twice. During those two stints, he won 59 games and lost 60 games.
Colangelo’s Suns had trouble most of the time in the 1980s. Some players, like Garfield Heard, who played in the 1976 NBA Finals, were involved in a well-known drug scandal. Young center Nick Vanos died in a plane crash in 1987, and the Suns didn’t make the playoffs from 1985 to 1988. In late 1987, after the drug scandal, Colangelo put together a group of investors who bought the Suns. After that, in 1987, he made a trade for Kevin Johnson.
In 1988–89, the Suns had one of the biggest turnarounds in NBA history. They went from 28 wins to 55 wins, which is almost double, and made their first of 13 straight playoff appearances. Colangelo was an important part of the group that raised money to build America West Arena in 1989. (renamed Talking Stick Resort Arena). Colangelo gave the Philadelphia 76ers Jeff Hornacek, Tim Perry, and Andrew Lang in exchange for Charles Barkley in 1992. The trade helped the Suns, who went to the NBA Finals for the second time in 1993. This time, they lost to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in six games. But Barkley and Colangelo’s relationship got worse over time, and in 1996, Barkley was traded to the Houston Rockets.
Colangelo won four NBA Executive of the Year awards with the Suns over the course of his time with the team. It would be the most awards for a team’s executive in the NBA. He eventually gave the presidency of the Suns to his son Bryan, who left the team to become the general manager of the Toronto Raptors. Bryan ended up winning two NBA Executive of the Year awards, one with Phoenix and another two seasons later with Toronto.
On December 7, 2015, Colangelo decided to return to the NBA to become the new chairman of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, as well as special adviser to the team’s managing partner. Bryan Colangelo took over as general manager and president of basketball operations for the 76ers on April 7, 2016. This was after their former president and general manager, Sam Hinkie, quit before the end of the 2015–16 season because he couldn’t get along with Jerry. The move brought the Colangelos back together with the Phoenix Suns for the first time since 2004. Colangelo stepped down as Chairman of Basketball Operations following the hiring of his son, but he retained his role as special adviser to the managing partner. Colangelo tried to keep Bryan’s job as general manager just before his son quit. He did this by threatening to hurt the team’s relationships with the NBA. On July 30, 2018, it was revealed that he would retire as of 2019.
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Additional sports activities
While in Chicago for a Suns game, Colangelo attended a Chicago Cubs baseball game at Wrigley Field. Soon thereafter he decided to inquire to Major League Baseball about bringing an expansion team to Arizona. He put together a group of investors in 1994 to buy a franchise, a year before MLB was going to hold meetings to choose new teams. In 1995, Colangelo’s group was given the Arizona Diamondbacks as a new team.
In 1998, the Diamondbacks began to play. Colangelo hired Joe Garagiola Jr. to be the general manager of his new baseball team. He then hired Buck Showalter, who had just done a good job as manager of the New York Yankees. Showalter and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner couldn’t agree on a contract extension, so Colangelo quickly hired Showalter to be the manager of the Diamondbacks. These hires were a big part of how quickly the expansion franchise did well. Key acquisitions made by Garagiola included the signing of Randy Johnson in 1999 and a trade for Curt Schilling in 2000 from the Philadelphia Phillies. They were co-MVPs of the 2001 World Series when the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees in seven games. As of 2022, this is the only big pro sports championship for the Phoenix area.
To build the 2001 champions, the Diamondbacks had to borrow a lot of money. He asked 12 of the highest-paid players, for example, to put off their pay for four years and pay it back over eight years. The ensuing debt came back to haunt the Diamondbacks in 2004. The Diamondbacks never got back on track after getting off to a slow start. This was only three years after they won the World Series and two years after they won their third division title in three years. They ultimately finished 51–111, the worst record in baseball and remains the worst in franchise history.
By then, Colangelo was gone. In the summer of 2004, he had to give up his job as Managing General Partner and then sell his share. His job as managing general partner was taken over by Ken Kendrick, and Jeff Moorad took over as CEO and head of operations for the franchise.
Colangelo defended his way of building the Diamondbacks in an interview with USA Today. He said that all he wanted to do was make a winning team. He compared his approach to that of the expansion team Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who had finished last or second-to-last every season at the time (and would not have a winning season until 2008). He said that the plan only went wrong when the economy got bad and he didn’t get as much money as he expected from baseball’s central fund.
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