Ben Tenzer spent enough hours at his friend’s house for it to qualify as a second residence by high school. When he would eventually return to his actual home, his parents would ask how his day was. The replies always kept them on their toes.
“Oh, it was fun,” Tenzer would say, as his dad, David, remembers the exchanges usually going. “I hung out with Jason Giambi.”
Tenzer’s classmate and close friend was Michael Tellem, the oldest son of NBA and MLB super-agent Arn Tellem. To the clientele regularly hanging around Tellem’s Los Angeles home, Tenzer was practically indistinguishable from the agent’s own children. “Ben grew up in our house,” Tellem said this week. “He’s like a fourth son to me.”
From running in the same circles as his favorite athletes as an awestruck teenager, to running errands as a student intern for the Nuggets, Tenzer’s rise to the top of Denver’s front office required years of observation, osmosis and eagerness to tackle any task. His promotion this week was a culmination, as he was named executive vice president of basketball operations by the Kroenke family. He and Jon Wallace have been handed the keys to Nikola Jokic’s 30s, which could be the most pivotal stretch in franchise history.
“He worked extremely hard to get where he is,” former Nuggets general manager and current Bulls executive Arturas Karnisovas said. “There’s never a job too small. I think it’s important to go through most of those (front office) positions and know exactly what each position requires, as you’re climbing up the ladder. Ben knows exactly what those positions demand.”
Tenzer’s unique surroundings in Los Angeles proved formative to his principles, even if he didn’t recognize it in real time. The middle child in his family, he was often upbeat but inherently quieter than his older brother. Puzzles and math came naturally to him, maybe more so than leading a conversation at first. “He kept his mouth shut and his eyes and ears open,” his mom, Debbie, said. “That has been a good thing for him his entire life.”
Tenzer’s dad worked adjacent to the entertainment business, representing writers, directors, producers and actors for CAA with an ethos he tried to pass along to his children: “Let other people have the spotlight. It’s about your client.” Needless to say, Ben already had a rudimentary grasp of the agent business when he started spending time with the Tellems.
The entire sports world seemed to function out of their house. It was an energizing space for an adolescent boy to float through. MVPs and top prospects wandered in and out. Hall of Fame guard and Lakers executive Jerry West often brought his children over while he talked business with Arn. Basketball players lived in the house for weeks at a time while preparing for the draft. Tenzer and the Tellem sons ate dinner with them. Kobe Bryant attended Michael’s bar mitzvah.
“He was there for all the discussions,” Arn said. “The tough ones. He was listening in on free-agent discussions, draft pick discussions, hearing me talk to teams. They would all sit there as I would work the phones. … They were there for every blow-by-blow.”
Tenzer’s favorite encounter was always Giambi. Too height-challenged to excel at basketball, he dedicated most of his youth sports career to baseball. The Oakland Athletics were Tenzer’s favorite team, and Giambi was their star slugger while he was in high school — a left-handed batting first baseman, just like Tenzer. Tellem was Giambi’s agent. “I actually got to hang out with him several times,” Tenzer reminisced. “That was probably the coolest. He was my favorite baseball player.”
It wasn’t all fun and games. Tenzer’s interest in Arn’s profession morphed into a recurring summer internship. Statistical research was part of the job, but it also involved a fair share of seemingly menial chores. Tenzer drove Derrick Rose to a commercial shoot. He dropped off a product box at Russell Westbrook’s apartment.
“(Tellem) put Ben and Michael and all those kids to work every summer,” Debbie Tenzer said. “No laziness. They would do anything just to be around the athletes.”
“They would help out at the gym,” Tellem said. “They would do errands for the players. … Sometimes they would have to pick up food late at night for them. All kinds of personal things. Anything the player needed, they were there for.”
Tenzer happily welcomed the assignments. It was later in his career that he understood how educational those were. Choosing to major in business at CU Boulder, he added more internships to his resume before and during college — first at MTV, where he assisted a TV show producer, then in Denver, where Tellem helped connect him with the Nuggets’ front office.
A business school administrator at CU told Tenzer that he needed to intern in a real industry, such as real estate or insurance, Tenzer’s mom remembers. Sports didn’t qualify, apparently. But Tenzer was hooked. He made the 40-minute drive from Boulder to Denver twice a week and paid his dues, often dropping off or picking up players from the airport (another exhausting drive away from downtown).
“I felt comfortable coming in here as an intern, just knowing how to feel out situations. Staying out of the way, or interacting with the players in little quiet ways,” Tenzer said. “I feel like I got experience from Arn’s house, being around all the clients, getting to just be comfortable with them. We’d go pick up the players after a workout (in Los Angeles). Did he have a bad workout? Do you not speak (on the drive), then? I think you learn how to really deal with the players. That was more valuable than I ever realized, actually. Because then you’re here, and you’re like, I get it. You’ve got to feel out how to not stand out, I think.”
Tenzer also sought ways to apply his knack for numbers. He’d always been a fan of Michael Lewis’s book “Moneyball,” a baseball analytics sensation that chronicled the Oakland A’s and was published the year Tenzer graduated high school (2003). In the world of NBA team-building, he decided it was essential to learn and master the salary cap. He attended Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles after graduating from Colorado, honing his skills in sports law while continuing to work jobs in the basketball community, including one for the NBA Summer League.
“When he explained to me the intricacies of the salary cap, I thought, ‘My god, this is like being a sophisticated tax attorney or something,’” David Tenzer said. “It’s that complicated.”
Then Ben returned to Stan and Josh Kroenke’s front office in 2013. (“He’s madly in love with Denver,” his mom said.) Tim Connelly was the general manager. Karnisovas was the assistant GM. Tenzer was regarded as a steady hand behind the scenes, providing his new financial expertise with a friendly demeanor. Karnisovas recalls being holed up in Connelly’s Las Vegas hotel room during Summer League once, laptops splayed out on the floor, while the three of them went through trade scenarios.
Those memories of grueling work nights have aged well for him. It helped that Tenzer was enjoyable to be around.
“I still think that Ben’s wedding was the best wedding that I’ve ever been part of, in Aspen,” Karnisovas said. “His interactions and relationships are probably a very valuable trait.”
“He doesn’t hold onto anything negative. He just likes people,” Tenzer’s mom said. “He’s very open that way. He doesn’t have any kind of grudges.”
Questions of inexperience loom over the beginning of Tenzer’s tenure alongside Wallace. No public evidence has accrued yet as to his capability as an NBA general manager. His negotiating tact. His breadth of relationships. His tactical basketball acumen.
The reason his past colleagues and mentors believe in him, despite his reputation as a numbers guy, is ultimately the relationship-building factor.
He swiftly left his mark in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he was general manager of the Nuggets’ G League affiliate for the last two years (in addition to his front office duties in Denver). Grand Rapids Gold president and founder Steve Jbara watched Tenzer adopt a hands-on approach, addressing players collectively at pregame shootarounds to emphasize the traits he wanted to see from Denver’s pipeline.
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Back in Denver, Tenzer was determined to make sure every person in the Nuggets organization owned a piece of Grand Rapids merch. He beamed the day he learned two-way player Trey Alexander had won G League Rookie of the Year in April. As Jbara saw it, the Gold was more than an irksome side gig to Tenzer; it was a passion project.
But then again, so was chauffeuring draft prospects around Los Angeles as a teenager.
“When I think of him, I think of him sitting at our kitchen table with his big smile,” Tellem said. “Asking questions, loving to hear the stories and listening with his eyes wide open. … It’s really so profoundly emotional to see him succeeding.”
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