The Big Green led him to the Celtics, naturally

What type of NBA team owner will Bill Chisholm be? The question has been on the minds of Boston Celtics fans since he and his fellow investors agreed to purchase the franchise at an initial valuation of $6.1 billion. (Wikipedia)

By Jay King / The Athletic

Thirty-five years after one of the most successful seasons in the history of Dartmouth men’s soccer, Big Green players from that era found a reason to reconnect recently.

The news of Bill Chisholm’s agreement to purchase the Boston Celtics had grabbed their attention. They reached out to one another. They contacted their old coach, Bobby Clark. They reflected on their two Ivy League championships and their march to the round of 8 in the 1990 NCAA tournament.

They celebrated Chisholm, their old teammate, whose new team is facing the New York Knicks in the second round of the NBA playoffs, with Game 2 slated for Wednesday night in Boston after the Knicks won the series opener on Monday.

Not much is known publicly about the incoming Celtics owner, but Chisholm’s former soccer teammates may provide some clues about the type of culture he will cultivate in Boston and the values he will hold dear.

They were his roommates, friends and earliest business partners, and their winning did not stop when they graduated from college. Some became successful businessmen. One is a part owner of a Major League Soccer team. Another had a run as an actor on “Melrose Place.”

Not every piece of Chisholm’s leadership style will trace back to his days in cleats in Hanover, New Hampshire, but he lives by many of the lessons he learned there.

“It’s part of my life that was certainly special,” Chisholm said. “But it’s also been so formative for me in business and just everything you do.”

Dartmouth’s soccer magic started with the coach, players who came through the program said.

Clark’s resume is long. After leading Dartmouth to its best years, he did the same at Stanford before winning a national championship at Notre Dame. Before coaching, he starred as a goalkeeper for Aberdeen FC in the Scottish Premiership, setting a British record for consecutive shutout minutes (1,155) that held for decades. In 2002, Aberdeen named Clark one of its top 25 players in franchise history.

“He’s iconic,” said former Dartmouth player Richie Graham, who is now a part owner of the Philadelphia Union.

“I think most importantly he built a culture,” Chisholm said. “And he built a culture of winning and a culture of togetherness and a culture of attention to detail, and those things are hard.”

Clark taught his players about more than the game. After they trailed dirt into the locker room, he would make them clean it up. When they went on bus rides, he would make sure they thanked the driver and left no trash.

Graham said it was no coincidence many of Clark’s players have been successful. Gregg Lemkau, the goalkeeper on the 1990 team, is a co-chief executive of BDT & MSD Partners, the merchant bank that brokered the Celtics sale to Chisholm. Tommy Clark, the coach’s son, founded Grassroot Soccer, a nonprofit using the sport as a tool to assist children in Africa. Andrew Shue co-founded a full-service creator media company named Raptive after an acting career. Josh Stein, class of 1988, is the governor of North Carolina.

“He was a values guy,” Graham said of Clark. “He was a work-ethic guy. No one was given anything, and I think a lot of those attributes probably shaped a lot of that group of guys, including Billy.”

At Dartmouth, Clark would typically start Chisholm at striker and play him the first 20 or 30 minutes before subbing him out for the players, including Graham, who scored most of the goals.

As Graham described it, Chisholm operated like a wide receiver who would take the top off the defense so teammates could operate underneath. Chisholm netted only one goal over 12 career appearances, according to an article in The New Hampshire Union Leader, but he took pride in performing his role. At roughly 6-foot-2, according to two of his teammates, he was physical enough that defenses could not feel comfortable allowing him to run free. He aimed to exhaust the opponent and loosen up the defense for later in the match.

“That’s what a lot of those runs are about,” Graham said. “So you might do a ton of those runs in the game, and you only get the ball a couple times.” He added: “They tire out the defense, but they also create opportunities for others.”

Chisholm needed to accept he would not be the star, as he had been at Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts. It took him years to carve out a consistent role on the varsity team at Dartmouth.

“You’re hoping you’re going to make them good people for life,” Bobby Clark said. “If they’re good teammates, they will be good workmates later on in life. And Billy, you couldn’t get anyone better than him.”

During Chisholm’s time at Dartmouth, the Big Green won the Ivy League title in 1988 and again in 1990 while going a team-record 14-2-2. In the latter season, they knocked off Vermont and Columbia in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament to advance to the round of 8 against Alexi Lalas’ Rutgers team.

Players from that Dartmouth squad still hold on to their final game together. Though Lalas went on to become a World Cup star for the United States, TV analyst and MLS general manager, the Dartmouth players still think of him as the guy they should have beaten to reach the national semifinals.

“He wasn’t that good,” Lemkau said. “If you talk to him, you can tell him I said that.”

A New York Times article about the match noted Lalas was off that day. He said he was shortly removed from a burst appendix that forced him to spend a month in a hospital.

“They were a surprise given the realities of the Ivy League,” Lalas said. “And all these years later, I still live rent-free in his head.”

That game against Rutgers was Chisholm’s last for Dartmouth. He tore his medial collateral ligament in about the 15th minute of a 1-0 loss.

“I probably learned more about myself and life lessons from losing some games and having some challenges getting on the field than from some of the victories,” Chisholm said, adding: “You’re kind of an accumulation of all those little experiences.”

What type of NBA team owner will Chisholm be? The question has been on the minds of Celtics fans since he and his fellow investors agreed to purchase the franchise at an initial valuation of $6.1 billion. As great as the team has been in recent years, he will be stepping in at a difficult time with the threat of an enormous luxury tax bill looming.

“He’ll be a strong, quiet leader,” Clark, his former coach, said.

Chisholm’s old friends believe he will be prepared.

“He’s no dummy, and I’m sure that he’s got a plan,” Graham said.

The franchise has its own successful culture to carry on. By all indications, Chisholm intends to preserve it.

“I think when I look at it not just over history, but the legacy that this group is building, that’s the real sustaining part,” Chisholm said. “Because people come and go, people get injured and you kind of miss things here and there, whatever. But the thing that really keeps it together is that culture. And that’s what Bobby Clark built, and that’s what I think the Celtics have done.”