In January 2014, Mark Tatum sat nervously at NBA headquarters waiting for a vote that would change his career. The owners cast their ballots 30-0. Twelve years later, Tatum is still the highest-ranking Black executive in professional sports.
The business he runs is enormous.
As NBA Deputy Commissioner, Tatum oversees the day-to-day operations of a league that generates more than $14 billion in revenue. The league's 30 franchises are worth more than $5.4 billion on average, according to Forbes. The NBA also operates a league in China valued at a reported $5 billion, a league in Africa worth more than $1 billion, and is scheduled to launch a European league by October 2027.
'You're looking at a $180 billion market cap company,' Tatum says. 'We're a global sport.'
Born in Vietnam to a Jamaican father and Asian mother, Tatum was raised in Brooklyn. He came up through the league's global marketing partnerships division — his original dream was simply to run corporate sponsorship for a major league. The deputy commissioner role was not on his radar. He is only the second person to hold the title; the first was Simon Gourdine, who took the role in 1974.
The five founders he studies.
Tatum shared with the Enterprise Zone podcast the Black business leaders who inspire him. The list reads like a private equity and media hall of fame:
- David Grain, founder of Grain Management, a private equity firm investing in telecom infrastructure. Net worth: $2.4 billion. - Sheila Johnson, co-founder of BET, which sold to Viacom for $3 billion in 2001. She now holds stakes in the NBA's Wizards, the WNBA's Mystics, and the NHL's Capitals. - Ed Lewis, who co-founded Essence magazine in 1969 and built it into a major digital platform. - Reginald Lewis, the first Black American to own and run a billion-dollar company, who led the $985 million leveraged buyout of Beatrice International in 1987. - Robert Smith, founder of Vista Equity Partners, the largest Black-owned private equity firm in the U.S., managing over $100 billion in assets and with a net worth estimated at $10 billion.
The Scale. take.
What Tatum's career illustrates is a straightforward free-market truth: build real commercial value and the market rewards it. The NBA's global expansion — China, Africa, Europe — is not a PR exercise. It is a revenue strategy, and Tatum is the operator executing it. The founders on his list share the same thread: they built assets, ran disciplined capital, and created enterprises that outlasted them. That is the playbook, regardless of background. Founders who study that list are studying the right curriculum.
