As Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle stepped to the podium for his Media Day press conference on September 30th, he began with a statement before turning to questions from the media. One line, in particular, stood out.

“The last three years have been challenging, but this team that Donnie and Mark and Mike Finley and Keith Grant have put together is exciting, on a couple of different levels,” he said.

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Most of the names he mentioned were familiar to the masses. Donnie is Donnie Nelson, the Mavericks’ longtime general manager. Mark is Mark Cuban, the team’s outspoken team owner for most of the past two decades. Mike is Michael Finley, the two-time All-Star who now works in the front office.

And then there’s Keith Grant. It’s a safe bet that most Mavericks fans have never heard his name. Those who have are almost certainly unaware of the full scope of his responsibilities. Grant’s name doesn’t get thrown around a lot by the public. He’s not at the forefront when the draft rolls around, when the trade deadline is ticking or free agency pursuits are in full swing. 

But Grant is involved in all of those things, and so much more. His fingerprints can be seen in virtually every facet of the organization because, ever since he joined the Mavericks for the franchise’s inception in 1980, Keith Grant is the Mavericks. No one person has worked for the team for longer. Arguably no one has been more important over the franchise’s 39 years in Dallas. 

And people within the organization — players, front office, ownership, support staff — know exactly how valuable he is.

“If there’s something that the Mavericks are doing, he’s involved. Period, end of story,” Nelson said. “He’s one of those guys that’s behind the curtains, will never see his number retired in the rafters, but the success that we’ve had here, his fingerprints are all over.”

Understanding exactly what Grant means to the organization is a matter of who you ask.

To the players, he’s the person who often acquires the appropriate number of tickets they need for family and friends, which arrive in with an envelope neatly placed sitting on their chairs in the locker room before games.

To Carlisle and the coaches, he’s the person who travels on every trip with the team and takes care of logistics so they can focus on game-planning for the next opponent. Grant’s responsibilities have included getting passports in order and dealing with customs on trips to Toronto or other details that may come up away from home.

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To Cuban, he’s the person who made a dream a reality when the Mavericks played a preseason game in the owner’s home city of Pittsburgh, PA in October 2009. Grant is also the person who Cuban went to in order to help organize another long-term goal: Looking into overseas opportunities and potentially booking games in the preseason.

By Grant’s own admission, those preseason conversations are the most difficult part of his job today. He’s in charge of creating Dallas’ preseason slate each season, which requires a lot of relationships with the other 29 teams in the NBA as well as working with Carlisle to do what’s best for him and his training camp plan.

Grant, 61, never aspired to do any of these things. Working for an NBA franchise was never his goal. As a senior at Oklahoma City University in 1980, Grant worked at the ballpark for the Oklahoma City 89ers, what was then the Philadelphia Phillies’ Triple-A team and later rebranded the Oklahoma City Dodgers after becoming the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate. There he was the “clubhouse guy,” as Grant puts it, essentially the equipment manager for the team. He imagined it as the first step of a long career in America’s Pastime.

“I wanted to be an equipment guy in baseball because I worked at the ballpark for like 11 years, as a batboy and then a clubhouse guy” Grant said. “I was hoping to get into that somehow, but those jobs are tough to get into.” 

The seasonal job with the 89ers was great as a college student but as he neared graduation, Grant couldn’t see a full-time job on the horizon within baseball.

A friend who was a sports information director at Oklahoma City University notified Grant about an NBA franchise that was set to spring into existence just south on I-35, so he reached out to inquire about what kind of jobs might be available. He received a response indicating mutual interest, so Grant flew down in the summer of 1980 to interview with the Mavericks. 

As fate would have it, the guy he interviewed with was Doug Atkinson, who also had a strong baseball background, working for the Dodgers’ minor league team in El Paso before moving to the big leagues with the California Angels in 1967. He came to Dallas after answering a call from then-Chicago Bulls head coach and future Mavericks inaugural head coach Dick Motta. Having seen life inside both sports, he knew Grant had what it took to cross over.

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“If you’re a clubhouse guy, you can do this job (of equipment manager),” Atkinson told Grant.

Back then, an equipment manager was a luxury position for NBA teams, with only a few franchises employing that position. Grant managed to snag one with the Mavericks but only as a seasonal gig from September through March. After his first season, Grant went back up north and worked the summer with the 89ers. But that fall, Grant caught a break: The Mavericks, impressed by his work during the inaugural season and realizing the value of the position, decided to hire him full time.

Grant’s beginning with the franchise included plenty of maintenance work behind the scenes. He cleaned the home locker room, gave players their practice gear for the road trip, took care of the visiting team when they would come in and did both teams’ laundry.

“I’ve gotten pretty good at laundry through the years, I can tell you that,” Grant said. “Between working baseball and then basketball, I’ve done my share of laundry.”

The hours were long, but he managed to find time to moonlight for another Dallas team. 

In 1982, one of the coworkers at Grant’s wife’s job mentioned that the Rangers were looking for an organist. She told him that her husband had experience playing the organ, so he reached out to Grant to gauge his interest.

“I told him that I have a pretty good idea but no, I’ve never played at a ballpark,” Grant said. “He goes, ‘Would you like to play tonight?’”

And so, on April 12, 1982, Grant played the organ as the Rangers hosted the New York Yankees. He was good enough for the team to ask him to come back for the rest of the season. In 1983, he continued his dual role as equipment manager for the Mavericks and organist for the Rangers.

The following year, Grant was promoted to administrative assistant, which came with a role in the scouting department. The larger time commitment forced him to give up his organist gig, but it put him on the path toward his eventual front-office role. 

“I kind of did grunt work around the basketball office,” Grant said. “The NBA was starting to grow right around that time so that job took along a life of its own. I got into scouting and video and it just snowballed.”

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He was on his way from there. Grant rose to director of scouting in the late ‘80s, when the Mavericks emerged as Western Conference up-and-comers, reaching the Western Conference Finals in 1988. In 1994, Motta returned to the Mavericks after a seven-year gap and changed Grant’s label to director of player personnel. Grant held that title until 1996, when he abruptly left the team for what was described at the time as “an element of burnout.” In reality, Grant says now, there were philosophical differences between he and others in the organization at the time, and felt that a separation was best for all parties. 

A few months later, though, he got a phone call from Don Nelson. The former Knicks coach was in the running for a job in Dallas as head coach and general manager, and reached out to Grant to get a feel for the organization. Nelson got the job, and one of his first orders of business was bringing Grant back into the loop as assistant general manager the summer leading up to the Dirk Nowitzki draft.

“The thing then, I think there were only like one or two assistant GMs in the league,” Grant said. “It was not a title, it wasn’t a thing. Now, some teams have three or four of them.”

That’s the last time Grant’s official title changed, though his job description has added and subtracted responsibilities throughout the years based on team need. But no one task can encapsulate the importance and trust he cultivated within the organization. So when Cuban bought the Mavericks at the turn of the century, he made sure to keep Grant on board.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Cuban said. “I didn’t walk in thinking I knew exactly what I needed to do. I walked in thinking I had no idea what to do and Keith, Donnie and Nelly, I told everybody, ‘As long as we’re on the same page, as long as we’re going towards the same goal, we’re going to be OK.’ It didn’t always work out perfectly but it worked out OK.”

After all, if Cuban was going to take Mavericks basketball into the future, who better than Grant to show him where the team had been? 

20 years later, Donnie Nelson believes it’s time for Grant’s title to undergo another change.

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“He, in essence, functions just like a co-general manager,” Nelson said. “Keith, for all intents and purposes, has been the general manager for a long time. He’s the rudder and the voice of reason.”

Voice of reason. That’s not only a common takeaway of Grant’s personality from those that know him; it’s a trait that helps make him the perfect yin to Nelson’s yang.

“He gives us a sense of calmness,” said Finley, the Mavericks’ vice president of basketball operations. “He’s always at ease, even though there’s a lot that’s going on that Keith is a part of. I think they (Nelson and Grant) complement each other well. I think Donnie is more abstract, some may say he could be all over the place. Keith is the guy that’s on the straight and narrow.

“When Donnie wants to do extravagant trade scenarios, Keith brings him back to a peaceful calm –  like, ‘Under certain rules we can’t do that,’ or ‘If we do that, it has to be done at a certain time under certain rule constraints.’ Keith kind of brings Donnie in when Donnie is going all over the place.”

Nelson concurs with Finley’s assessment.

“It’s a great partnership because I’ll get excited, creative and over my skis, and then find out from Keith to stay between the lines,” Nelson said. “That’s needed when you have high levels of creativity.”

Grant has proven especially vital over the past few years as the Mavericks saw their run of success under Nowitzki come to an end and a rebuild waiting. It means the start of a new era, and no one has been through more from them than Grant, whether it was the rise of an expansion team to a conference finals contender or going from a decade of darkness and misery in the ‘90s to the golden age of Mavericks basketball this century.

That includes a hands-on role in acquiring the two focal points of the current roster. After Nelson had identified Doncic as a talent worth pursuing in the 2018 draft, he sent Grant to accompany a European scout to watch the teenage Slovenian play with Real Madrid in April 2018. Grant ultimately spent two and a half weeks in Europe watching Doncic play a few playoff games in Greece, then a few more in Spain.

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“Just like me, he set eyes on Luka and was involved every step of the way,” Nelson said. “When you’re in our positions, guys that have eyes for talent, you want to cross-check yourself with them. We all saw the same thing.”

When discussions to bring Kristaps Porzingis to Dallas ramped up swiftly in January, Grant was involved in deciding what pieces should and could be involved in the trade and how it would shape the Mavericks going forward.

“He’s out there seeing games, trades and transactions,” Nelson said. “We do everything together. He’s my right hand. One of the best in the business.”

When looking back at the past 40 years, Grant says he’s enjoyed all of the ups and downs, the fun times and the struggles that have helped shape his journey. He’s had everything along the way, except for regrets.

“I grew up in the organization,” Grant said. “I’ve done everything except coach real NBA games. I coached our Summer League team, I scouted, I’ve washed the uniforms, ordered uniforms, I’ve done salary cap, contract negotiations … I think if there’s one thing that I’ve done is I’ve worked hard to get to where I am.

“I’ve always said, ‘Don’t be a problem, be a problem solver.’”

Perhaps that’s the best way to sum up Grant’s role, then: The Mavericks’ indispensable problem solver for nearly four decades. 

“He’s the guy that gets things done,” Carlisle said. “As we say, he’s the guy that somehow gets the toothpaste back in the tube.”

But Nelson has one more word that could fit the bill.

“He’s an inspiration to every young man or woman that wants to get into our industry because humble beginnings and doing every job that is imaginable, including washing socks, and building a career into what he’s become,” Nelson said, “it’s been an incredible, magical, well-earned carpet ride.” 

Photo by Saad Yousuf