BELL MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL - Key Persons
Timberwolves coach Chris Finch was asked a couple hours before Monday's game with Boston at Target Center how much he thought recently signed Greg Monroe would be able to play in his first NBA game in more than 2½ years.
Joel Bell - Founder, President
Since 1993, Joel Bell has negotiated over One Billion Dollars ( $1,000,000,000) in contract negotiations for his clients. He has also negotiated shoe deals with every major shoe company, beverage company,restaurant chain and clothing company He has a perfect 100% record for securing offer sheets for his restricted free agents, which is 80% higher than the average sports agent. He has achieved this through painstaking and exacting attention to statistical and financial analysis in every single contract negotiation.
Joel has represented several Top 5 draft picks, as well as many lottery and mid-1st round picks in various NBA Drafts. ESPN cited Joel as having negotiated the best NBA contract of the last decade, and negotiating the largest upfront payment ever received by a rookie. He has also represented top female athletes such as Katrina McClain and Sheryl Swoopes, working with Nike to create the Air Swoopes, the first shoe ever named for a female player.
Joel graduated from American University with degrees in economics and communications, and later received a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law, where he remains involved. In addition to prior work in the legal field as a business litigator, Joel has worked as a sports writer for American, Australian, and European magazines and a television host. He is also the former Director of International Events for the World Basketball League and was General Manager and coach for several professional teams.He is most proud of the work he has done on behalf of his clients in their communities, arranging hundreds of college scholarships for deserving youth and programs that teach music to the developmentally disabled.
Wolves assistants Micah Nori and Elston Turner were also missing from the Wolves bench Monday, prompting the Wolves to bring Jeff Newton and Tim Lewis up from the Iowa Wolves of the G League.
It wasn't until Russ Smith found himself surrounded by cherry trees, waterfalls and miles of bright-green foliage among the Fujian province in China that he began to truly appreciate the little things. Maybe it was the 62 points he averaged in China's National Basketball League, or the 81 he dropped with Luoyang in 2017. But mostly, as Russ tells us over Zoom, it was the time he spent alone that allowed him the needed headspace to fall in love with a new craft, bourbon. "It allowed me to really take in what I was doing and just be happy again. My first three years as a pro, yeah, I was getting paid pretty well, but I was unhappy," he says. "I want to be respected for my craft. And I think that means more to me, my craft being appreciated, my creativity being appreciated." Read the full article on SLAM
Merely six years removed from his illustrious career donning the Louisville basketball red and black, Russ Smith is just getting warmed up.
One of the most prolific scorers in program history has checked the boxes in his athletic career: overlooked prospect turned NCAA Champion turned pro, but now Smith also has his sights set on other enterprises: The Russ Smith Foundation, a budding rap career, the bourbon industry, and Tinseltown to name a few.
Since being a second-round pick in the NBA draft in 2014, he has been playing basketball professionally all around the globe, even becoming NBL-China scoring champion in 2017 and 2019, so it's safe to say there's plenty of juice left untapped in that keg. But what many people don't know about "Russdiculous" is that he has had bigger plans beyond the hardwood since he began his professional career.