From 4am with Kobe to emails from David Stern, Australian agent enters big time
While Australian NBA players have been locking horns with superstars like Steph Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo for years, few Australians have entered the top sports agent firms.
But Australian agent Daniel Moldovan announced on Friday his Lighthouse Sports Management agency had been absorbed by global giant Octagon, which represents Curry, Antetokounmpo and manages over $US1 billion in player contracts.
Aron Baynes (right) in action for the Toronto Raptors against Philadelphia 76ers centre Joel Embiid.Credit:AP
Moldovan and his 43 clients, including NBA title-winner Aron Baynes and potential NBA draftees Josh Giddey and Mojave King, will join Octagon, with the agent confident the move will open more doors for Australian players and offer him more chances to recruit elite NBA talents.
The local agent scene is a highly competitive one, with a number of skilled agents courting a small pool of players and few get the opportunity to try their hand in the cut-throat US market.
Moldovan has had the good fortune to have connections to senior figures in Australian basketball who helped him start his career, including former Sydney Kings owner Mike Wrublewski who called then NBA commissioner David Stern to help Moldovan get a job working for the NBA.
He has also developed a discerning eye for young talent, such as signing Baynes when he had just finished college. He has since gone on to have a lucrative NBA career.
“I’ve been successful in recruiting and placing Australian players in the NBA and EuroLeague and had the majority of the highest-paid players in the NBL for the past 10 years or so,” Moldovan said.
“It definitely opens up an opportunity for me to recruit a whole different category of American player. That is going to be a big focus of mine, in addition to achieving the best for my Australian players.”
Moldovan has had the privilege of seeing the NBA from some unusual vantage points, like watching a 4am Kobe Bryant workout, to having Stern email him with an NBA job offer, to learning how to be an agent from the esteemed Marc Fleisher, whom he worked with for 15 years at Entersport.
Australian NBA agent Daniel Moldovan has joined global sports agency Octagon.
“Mike Wrublewski placed a call to David Stern and said I want you to find something in NBA head office for Daniel,” Moldovan said.
“He didn’t tell me he had done this and then one day I got an email from David Stern with two sentences, something along the lines of “Mike says great things about you and I have a job for you in New York, please contact this person”.
“I called them right away and within a month I moved over there. Through people I worked with, I ended up at a dinner with Marc and I ended up getting hired at Entersport – the rest is history.”
Moldovan and his family have spent the past few months in Sydney after almost a year locked down at home in Los Angeles – he plans to return to the US later in the year.
“I was always going to spend a decent amount of time here because I had two NBL rookies in Josh Giddey and Mojave King,” Moldovan said.
“Having two 18-year-olds means you need to be more hands-on than signing a rookie out of college.
“But with COVID-19 it was the perfect excuse to be down here longer, considering how well Australia has handled this and how badly America has handled it.”
Meanwhile in NBA news, Australian Boomers forward Joe Ingles set a new career-high of 34 points as his Utah Jazz lost to the Washington Wizards 131-122.
Ingles nailed eight of 10 three-pointers but wasn’t top-scorer for his team with Donovan Mitchell scoring 42 points.
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