Tom Penn
Tom Penn is an American sports executive who is the chief executive officer of Major League Soccer club San Diego FC. He is a co-founder of the Sports Leadership Institute and a former National Basketball Association executive and ESPN analyst. Penn co-founded Major League Soccer expansion team Los Angeles FC in 2014, and served as president and co-owner before stepping down from the position in 2020.
ESPN analyst
As an NBA analyst, Penn is regularly featured as a basketball operations expert on advanced analytics, salary cap issues, the NBA draft, player trades and collective bargaining issues.Penn started working with ESPN during the 2010 NBA Draft, and during the free agency period of 2010, he operated ESPN's cap machine on SportsCenter, where he manipulated a touchscreen to show potential destinations for LeBron James and other marquee free agents. Penn has also been on ESPN using the ESPN Trade Machine to break down NBA trades. He left ESPN in 2018 to join Turner Sports.
NBA executive
In 2012, Penn was widely reported as being close to accepting a position as general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. He instead re-signed with ESPN. From 2007 to 2010, he spent four seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers as the vice president of basketball operations and assistant general manager. Penn is an expert on the NBA salary cap and collective bargaining agreement. Penn worked with general manager Kevin Pritchard as they restored the Blazers from the "Jail Blazers" era. The Blazers won 54 games in 2008–09 and again reached 50 wins in 2009–10 in spite of injuries to key players. During the summer of 2009, Penn was offered the general manager job with the Minnesota Timberwolves, but he turned it down, deciding to stay with the Blazers after a promotion to vice president of basketball operations. Ten months later, Penn was fired after in what one writer called a "drive by" shooting. On June 24, 2010, the day of the NBA Draft, Kevin Pritchard was also fired by the Blazers.Penn worked with the Vancouver / Memphis Grizzlies as assistant general manager and legal counsel from 2000 to 2007. For five of those seasons in Memphis, he worked closely with Jerry West and Chuck Daly. The Grizzlies made the playoffs three straight seasons but never advanced passed the first round. In 1999, Penn worked as part of prospective NBA owner Michael Heisley's NBA acquisition team. Penn worked with Dick Versace and Heisley's team to help guide Heisley through the NBA acquisition process until Heisley ultimately purchased the Vancouver Grizzlies in May 2000. After one season in Vancouver, Heisley moved the team to Memphis.