Croce reinvented the role of NBA team owner, becoming to pro basketball what Sam Walton had been to retailing. Croce, by God, would meet and thank his customers personally. Before every home game he was a highly visible presence at First Union Center. As fans swarmed into the lobby, he was there to greet them, pump hands, ask their names. (Croce is obsessive about asking people's names, wherever he is.) He was publicly available in a tangible way. With his unflaggingly upbeat style he personified a dramatically different tenor in the 76ers' management. Croce in effect became "the fans' owner," Oltman says.
It only enhanced Croce's image in the fans' eyes that he "was from the streets, a Rocky-type guy," as Oltman puts it. Allen Iverson, the sensational guard the 76ers acquired with their number one draft pick in 1996, wasn't the only one on the team to be festooned with tattoos. The team president was, too. When Croce exhibited a wear-and-wash Liberty Bell tattoo commemorating the GOP Convention in Philadelphia, two years ago, it didn't seem hokey. He already sported a Queen of Diamonds superimposed over a tortuous dragon on his right arm, a black pirate ship under full sail on his left, and a brilliant parrot on his back -- all real.
Croce's realness was a source of great strength. He knew who he was. He had his rough edges, but he didn't pretend otherwise.
The more I learned about Croce and his tenure at the 76ers, the more I began to see his unassuming nature, especially his willingness to listen carefully to others, as an important counterbalance to his thundering style. If his manner seemed overbearing on the face of it, people didn't see him that way. They responded positively to his zest for fun and competition, his self-confidence, and his optimism. But people rallied to him, no less, because he was a leader who seemed genuinely interested in hearing where they wanted to go. He was manifestly believable to 76ers fans when he said, in so many words, that he wanted to win as much for them as for himself.
Croce may have a powerhouse personality, but he lacks the arrogance that's often associated with power. "He's a lunatic," notes Bill Lyon, longtime sports columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and coauthor of Croce's two recent books, "but in a lovable way."
The Magic Wand
In December, when I boarded a Citation Ultra to fly to Nashville at the start of two days of Croce watching, I was prepared to meet a beguiling personality. His sociability, I resolved, wouldn't distract me from my mission of divining how his peculiar brand of optimism motivated -- or was it manipulated? -- the people around him. Sure enough, I found Croce to be uncommonly likable. The Nashville audience apparently enjoyed his speech, feeding off his extraordinary energy and exuberance. He received a standing ovation.
But as Croce and I headed back to the Nashville airport, I felt that I still didn't have a completely satisfying answer to my question. With the speech behind him Croce seemed to relax. During the return flight to Philadelphia we settled into plush leather seats. We ate sandwiches and knocked down some Miller Lites.
When we finished eating, I picked up the thread of my interview with Croce, my notebook and pen in hand. What struck me most about him was the intensity etched in his face not when he talked but when he listened. He seemed to fix his head into place -- frozen. He locked his blue eyes on mine. I thought of a laser beam.
I asked how he came up with his "I feel great" signature line. It happened in the 1980s, Croce said. He was the host of a call-in show on a Philly radio station. For an hour each weekday morning he would answer questions about sports medicine. When a caller asked him how he felt, Croce replied with his stock line: "I feel great." He in turn would ask each caller, his voice warbling with enthusiasm, "How are you?" If callers responded with a listless "good" or "OK," he wouldn't take the question. Either they said, "I feel great," or he hung up.
"I believe that if you say it, you'll start to believe it," Croce explained to me. And he'd noticed something else. When he uncorked an "I feel great" in person, people would stand up straighter, intrigued. "They're thinking,'Why do you feel great?' All of a sudden, they want to know why you're feeling that way. It engages them," he said. If it boiled down to a variation on the old clichÉ -- smile at the world, and the world smiles back at you -- so be it. If it was based on a fib -- surely Croce didn't always feel great -- that didn't matter, either. The gimmick, however primitive, worked.
My jaundiced impressions I kept to myself. Our conversation turned to the question of why Croce, a wealthy man, would undertake a new career as a national media star. He referred vaguely to wanting to have an "impact."
Then, with a flick of his wrist, he whipped the pen out of my hand.
"If this pen was a magic wand and you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?" he asked. I was momentarily stunned. Croce's audacity, which I had gauged with detachment until that moment, had become abruptly real. His snatching of my pen was a breach of civil behavior. He might as well have booted me in the stomach while I was doing push-ups. But I didn't detect the slightest malice in those laser-beam eyes. I sensed an overweening desire to help me succeed on my terms.
Those eyes left no space for an evasive answer. I babbled something about writing a book. He homed in: What book? When could I start? It was a galvanizing moment. He was the magic wand, empowering me to reach for my star.
Joseph Rosenbloom is a senior editor at Inc.
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