Independent Sports and Entertainment (ISE) has terminated Dan Fegan, one of the NBA’s most prominent agents, as President of ISE Basketball. The news came on Friday via an ISE press release:
More on Kevin Johnson/Dan Fegan from the @ISEWorldwide release here: pic.twitter.com/1tzR4sAd9V
— Sam Amick (@sam_amick) March 10, 2017
Notable within the press release, outside of Fegan’s termination, is that Kevin Johnson, a former NBA All-Star and former mayor of Sacramento, will be inducted as a Vice Chairman for ISE.
Fegan is known among NBA circles particularly for one well-covered NBA negotiation. He was DeAndre Jordan’s agent when the Clippers center came close to signing with the Dallas Mavericks before changing his decision in one of the strangest situations in free agency history. Jordan subsequently left Fegan, one of several prominent athletes (including Dwight Howard and John Wall) to fire him as their representation.
According to Darren Heitner of Forbes, Fegan was fired by the agency for attempting to poison their business. ISE is accusing Fegan of several instances of misconduct:
“Fegan has repeatedly taken action to unfairly compete with ISE, to poison ISE’s business by attempting to turn its own employees against it, and to freeze out executives from asserting their supervisorial authority,” states the Complaint. “Fegan has carried out this scheme to put his own personal business interests above that of ISE with the goal of capitalizing on his disloyalty by attempting to take from ISE the very business he sold to it in 2013.”
The Complaint states that Fegan owned and operated a side business — Fegan Sports — keeping employees, prospective clients, and other business interests away from ISE. One “high profile” unnamed NBA player allegedly signed with Fegan Sports instead of ISE during Fegan’s employment term, which would be a breach of Fegan’s fiduciary duties to his employer.
As part of the termination, ISE is filing suit to prevent Fegan from poaching employees and clients as part of a non-compete agreement.
