Bing, Dave 1943–

Dave Bing 1943–

Business executive, former basketball player

At a Glance…

Began Successful Second Career

Raised Money to Save School Sports

Became Hall of Fame Member

Sources

The image of the millionaire professional athlete is a familiar one. But Dave Bing, though he came from modest origins to become one of basketball’s all-time greats and a wealthy man, matches none of the stereotypes. Bing’s position as a leader of Detroit’s business community and as one of the most successful African-American executives in the nation may owe something to his fame as an athlete, but much more to ambition, acumen, and hard work.

Bing grew up in a poor neighborhood in Washington, D.C., with his parents, who, as Bing explained to Rick Telander of Sports Illustrated, “had old-fashioned values.” Bing absorbed those values from his family and learned others, notably teamwork and long-term thinking, from his high school basketball coach. William Roundtree, the coach at Spingarn High in Washington, D.C., believed in teamwork above all. “If I’d had a different philosophy,” Roundtree conceded to Telander, “David could have scored 40 points a game.” As it was, Bing’s statistics were conspicuous enough to get him named to the Senior Scholastic High School All-America team and recruited by Syracuse University in 1962.

Already interested in business, Bing majored in economics and marketing at Syracuse. On the basketball court, he was an All-American, averaging 24.8 points per game over four years and setting a school scoring record that stood for more than 20 years. Never an exceptionally accurate shooter, especially at long ranges, Bing achieved his scoring prowess with his talent for getting past defenders and by taking many shots—sometimes 30 or more a game. At six feet, three inches, he was considered small for the National Basketball Association (NBA), but what a Time correspondent called his “whippet-like speed and agility” as well as his extraordinary jumping ability made him the number two pick when the Detroit Pistons drafted him upon his graduation in 1966.

Bing came to the Pistons as something of a consolation prize: the hapless Detroit team had finished the previous season in a last-place tie with the New York Knicks and hoped to revitalize itself by drafting University of Michigan star Cazzie Russell. When the team lost a coin toss with the Knicks, Russell went to New York and the Pistons had to “settle” for Bing. A year later it was obvious that the Pistons had no need to console themselves; Russell was still struggling to establish himself, while Bing was named

At a Glance…

Born November 29, 1943, in Washington, DC; son of a building contractor; married twice (divorced); children: Cassaundra, Aleisha, Bridgett. Education: Syracuse University, B.A., 1966.

Professional basketball player with Detroit Pistons, 1966-74, Washington Bullets, 1975-77, and Boston Celtics, National Bank of Detroit, Detroit, Ml, management trainee, 1967-75; Paragon Steel, Detroit, management trainee, 1978-80; Bing Steel, Inc., Detroit, owner and president, 1980—. Owner of Superb Manufacturing, Inc., and Heritage 21, Inc.; co-owner of Bing-Thomas, Inc. Worked as basketball commentator on radio and television. Has served on board of directors of Children’s Hospital of Detroit, Michigan Association of Retarded Children and Adults, Black United Fund, Detroit Urban League, and March of Dimes.

Awards: National Basketball Association (NBA) Rookie of the Year, 1967; named to NBA All-Star Team seven times; National Minority Small Businessperson of the Year, 1984; elected to Basketball Hall of Fame, 1990.

Addresses: Office— Bing Steel, Inc., 1130 West Grand Blvd., Detroit, Ml 48208.

Rookie of the Year and averaged 20 points a game, finishing 10th in the league in scoring.

In his second season, Bing scored 2,142 points to lead the NBA, averaging 27.1 per game and several times shooting over 30 points. He was chosen to start in the All-Star game, the first of seven All-Star appearances, and almost single-handedly lifted the Pistons out of the East Division cellar for the first time in years. He went on to become one of basketball’s dominant guards, scoring 18,327 points in his 12 seasons—including 54 shot in a single game—and making 5,397 assists, enough to place him 24th and 12th, respectively, in the all-time rankings for those categories in 1991.

In 1975 Bing was traded to the Washington Bullets, his hometown team, and though he was past his prime, he played in all 82 games of the 1975-76 season and was named Most Valuable Player of the 1976 All-Star game. He spent two years with the Bullets, then decided to retire from basketball in 1978 after a year with the Boston Celtics. When he left the game, the Pistons retired his number, 21, making him the only Piston to be so honored.

Bing’s sports career came well before the era of multimillion dollar contracts, and he was not among the bestpaid players of his time. His salary for the 1966-67 season was only $15,000, and his biggest contract, with the Washington Bullets in 1977, was for $225,000. “Then I took a $35,000 cut to play for the Celtics my last season,” he recalled in Sports Illustrated. “The mistake most of us make,” he acknowledged to the Washington Post’s David Aldridge, “is that we think we’re going to play forever. Very few guys, I think, prepare for a second career. The lifestyle we lead, the position that the public puts us in as a successful athlete, makes us think we’re invincible.”

Began Successful Second Career

Bing, however, had never counted on basketball to make his fortune. In 1967, he went to the National Bank of Detroit to apply for a mortgage to buy a house. He got the loan, but he also got a job—a position as a management trainee. For the next eight years he worked for the bank during the off-season. “I … learned everything there was to know about money, financing, and the banking industry,” he disclosed to Lloyd Gite of Black Enterprise.

Bing’s move to Washington put an end to his banking career, but after his retirement he was approached with an offer by Paragon Steel, a Detroit-based company. When he learned that Paragon was only looking for a prominent athlete to fulfill a public relations role, Bing declined the offer. Paragon returned with a proposal more to his liking: a chance to learn the ins and outs of the steel business. “I worked in the warehouse with inventory control, in the plant getting a basic knowledge of the product and in shipping and receiving,” he informed Gite. “On the inside I started in the accounting area, then on to credit, purchasing, sales, and marketing.”

After two years Bing felt ready to strike out on his own in the steel business. In addition to his race, Bing’s reputation as an athlete proved to be an obstacle to starting a business; as he pointed out in Black Enterprise, “Most folks don’t think blacks understand economies of scale, big business and big dollars. There were people who didn’t think I had the ability or acumen to understand that. Secondly, being an athlete was a negative [thing], because we are viewed as idiots.” The bank officer who handled Bing’s startup loan observed to the Washington Post’s Aldridge that Bing’s fame was “a double edged sword. Some of my counterparts viewed him as a jock only; others were so in awe of him that they didn’t really pay attention to the financial side of his plans.”

Bing had no hesitation about using his athletic fame to boost business. He went to work as a radio and television commentator, covering Michigan State University’s basketball games throughout the Midwest for two years. Since Bing Steel’s marketing area coincided with the states where Big Ten universities were located, being a media personality was a valuable marketing tool. Bing’s radio broadcasts and television appearances were, in essence, free advertising for Bing Steel. Closer to home, he has also worked as a commentator for his old team, the Detroit Pistons.

It took $80,000 of Bing’s savings and a $250,000 loan to start Bing Steel, which processes steel as opposed to making it. He had effectively laid the groundwork for a successful business venture, but the company began operations in the middle of the worst recession the American steel industry had known since the 1930s. Bing Steel lost $90,000 in its first six months of operation. “I thought I was going to bleed to death,” Bing admitted in Black Enterprise. The company turned the corner when Bing won a contract to supply steel to General Motors. This led to more business with the automaker, as well as orders from other companies. With its reputation and sales growing quickly, Bing Steel became profitable two years later, grossing $4.2 million in 1982 and more than double that the next year. By 1990 sales were $61 million, making Bing Steel the 10th largest black-owned company in the United States, according to Black Enterprise.

Such achievements did not make Bing complacent: “The reality, in my opinion, is that we make peanuts,” he asserted to the Washington Post’s Aldridge. “Yeah, we’re doing okay. But I think gross sales is an aberration of how one looks at success. To me as a business person, success … is what you can bring down to your bottom line.” And he told a Sports Illustrated correspondent in 1991, “We almost lost it all in the last 12 to 18 months. I’m in this business because I like it. But when people say ‘Would you do it over again?’ you don’t have to be a genius to say ‘No.”’ With the fragile state of the American steel industry in mind, Bing has diversified, starting a metal stamping company, a construction company, and—with Pistons star Isiah Thomas—a fiberglass company.

Profit is not the only thing on Bing’s mind. He has a reputation as a benevolent and caring employer who emphasizes teamwork in his businesses and feels a strong responsibility for the well-being of his 200 employees. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the executive vice-president of Bing Steel or one of my hourly workers, you’re going to get respect from me. Team effort is important here,” he told Black Enterprise’s Gite. “We all work together to get the job done.” Seventy-eight percent of the company’s workers are black—“I am trying to create employment opportunities for our people.” And as he declared in Sports Illustrated, “I’ll never pay just minimum wage, never.”

Raised Money to Save School Sports

Bing is also active in many community organizations, devoting 15 hours per week to charity work, in addition to the 60 hours he puts into his businesses. One of the lessons he learned early in life, he has said, was the importance of using whatever success he achieved to help others. He made headlines in 1989 when he set out to raise money to maintain athletic programs in the Detroit schools, which were facing a major financial crisis. “The easiest thing to do is quit on Detroit,” he pointed out in an interview with Joe LaPointe of the New York Times. “I’m not about to do that.” In response to critics who said that sports were not a priority in a financially strapped school system, Bing concluded in that same interview, “You look at 4,500 kids who are involved at school with sports and that is a significant number. Many of them would not go to school if these things are taken away.” And he told a Black Enterprise correspondent, “I decided to raise money for sports because sports is how people relate to me.” The magazine also quoted assistant school superintendent Thomas Steel, who observed: “For students who are at risk of dropping out of school, Dave Bing has sent them a message—someone cares about them.”

Bing’s public profile and the high esteem in which he is held by his community have generated speculation about his political prospects. In 1989 Bing was mentioned as a possible candidate for mayor of Detroit, but he denied having political aspirations and supported the incumbent, Coleman Young. According to Sports Illustrated, it was rumored that Young wanted Bing to succeed him in 1993; Bing commented, “You think about it, but my responsibilities are to my companies and my people.” As he assessed in the New York Times in 1989, “I’ve got some time left before I even consider thinking about a political career.”

Became Hall of Fame Member

In 1990 Bing was elected to basketball’s Hall of Fame. The selection process created some controversy; when none of the candidates received enough votes on the first round—thus raising the possibility that there would be no inductees in 1990—the committee created a second ballot with fewer names. Bing, along with Earl Monroe and Elvin Hayes, was selected after the second vote. New York Times columnist Dave Anderson derided the maneuver, and Hall of Fame president Bob Cousy resigned, claiming the credibility of the process had suffered. But the Washington Post, which praised the “style and substance” of the new hall-of-famers, noted that “even Cousy would be hard-pressed to argue that this year’s class does not belong.”

Bing is often held out as a role model to young African-Americans. He acknowledged in the New York Times that “I’m probably one of the few black males in [Detroit] in business who has a positive image,” but remarked in Sports Illustrated, “If I’m a role model, well, it’s largely because I have a big payroll, I spend time in the community and I’m successful. I’ve never yet seen a role model who was broke, bankrupt, and out of work.” At the same time, he pushes his philosophy that work and service are the means not only to material success but to deeper satisfaction in life, a point he reiterated in the Washington Post: “You need to work to be productive. Not so much for income. I’m not working for income, if you will. It’s to be productive, it’s to keep myself busy, to keep me doing something that’s positive.”

Sources

Books

Taragano, Martin, Basketball Biographies, McFarland & Co., 1991.

Periodicals

Black Enterprise, January 1985; October 1989.

Jet, March 4, 1991.

Newsweek, January 8, 1968.

New York Times, July 25, 1989; May 10, 1990.

Sports Illustrated, August 19, 1991.

Time, February 2, 1968.

Washington Post, May 22, 1989; May 13, 1990.

—Tim Connor