Brian Berger of Sports Business Radio spoke at length with Geoff Petrie in Vegas over the weekend, and gets an incredible story out of him.
He told us the story of how in the early days of Nike, before they were the multi-billion dollar company they are today, the company was sometimes late with his endorsement payment. After Nike fell several months behind and owed Petrie about $40,000, they offered him stock in the company in lieu of the money they owed him. Petrie and his agent decided they wanted the money instead of the stock options, which at the time weren't worth much at all. Ouch. There's no telling how much that $40,000 worth of Nike stock would be worth today, some 36 years later, but we had a chuckle and decided it would be a considerable amount of money.
Petrie might own the Kings if he'd taken the stock.
Read Brian's full entry -- lots more insight on how Kings staff are treated at The Palms. (Short version: Like royalty.)