Tom Penn
| Tom Penn | |
|---|---|
| Born | Peoria, Illinois |
| Occupation | Television personality, Sports executive, lawyer, executive, analyst |
Tom Penn is the President and Co-Owner of Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Football Club.
Penn is also an ESPN NBA Analyst, former NBA executive and Co-Founder of the Sports Leadership Institute.
The Los Angeles Football Club is the Major League Soccer (MLS) team based in the greater Los Angeles area. Along with Penn, owners include Henry Nguyen, Peter Guber, Magic Johnson, Nomar Garciaparra, Mia Hamm, Tony Robbins, and Will Ferrell. The team was announced in October 2014 and plans to play its first game in 2018.
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,[2] and during the free agency period of 2010, Penn 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.
In 2012, Penn was widely reported as being very close to accepting a position as GM of the Philadelphia 76ers. Penn instead re-signed with ESPN. From 2007 to 2010, Penn spent four seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers as Vice President of Basketball Operations and Assistant General Manager. Penn is a top 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 a number of injuries to key players. During the summer of 2009, Penn was offered the General Manager job with the Minnesota Timberwolves, but he turned down the job, deciding to stay with the Blazers after a promotion to Vice President of Basketball Operations. Ten months later, Penn was fired in what one writer called a "drive by" shooting that warned Kevin Prichard might be next. On June 24, 2010, the day of the NBA Draft, Kevin Pritchard was also fired by the Blazers.
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