RANSOM

As the 2002 NBA Draft wound down, agent Bill Duffy stood in the back of the Theater at Madison Square Garden, his hands full of various NBA team hats, with a look of exhaustion painted across his face. He exhaled with a wide smile, knowing that over the past three hours, he'd just seen his client roster bulge, adding five first-round picks (including Jay Williams, Drew Gooden and Kareem Rush) to a client stable at his BDA Sports Agency that already included several NBA vets, including All-Stars Steve Nash and Antonio Davis.

"I've always had an interest in the business side,” Duffy says a few days after the draft. "I knew everything about sports—batting averages, arena deals, ownership—when I was five years old.”