Superagent days in past, Falk looks ahead

David Falk loves Ferraris. He loves the way they look and drive, the way they accelerate and keep accelerating, the way they turn heads and widen eyes.

But as he sits in his ninth-floor office in the District, Falk brings up Ferraris not to boast about his stable of luxury cars but to tell a story about the company’s late founder, Enzo Ferrari.

Enzo, the story goes, sat down in a prototype of a two-seat convertible that seemed perfect. It was unlike any car on the road, but Enzo didn’t feel right about something.

He finally figured out the problem: The rearview mirror was out of place. He reached up and ripped it off the windshield.

“When you drive a Ferrari, you never have to look behind you,” Enzo said.

Falk pauses, then transitions into his own story. After 35 years as an agent, he knows he’s at a different stage in his career.

Falk, who has been in the District since he attended law school at George Washington, once was one of the NBA’s biggest power brokers. Representing the likes of Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Juwan Howard, Falk wasn’t just an agent; he was a conglomerate, an empire, a force to be reckoned with.

But 25 years after he began representing Jordan, Falk isn’t looking behind him. He isn’t worried about the next contract he’ll negotiate, the next marketing idea he’ll conjure up or the next client he’ll sign.

At 58, Falk seems utterly content - with his legacy, his client list and, most of all, the relationships he has created.

“At this point in my life, I’m not trying to re-create the past,” the Rockville resident says. “I don’t want to go back to where I was 10, 15 years ago.”

‘A nut for loyalty’

The words “agent” and “loyalty” rarely are near each other.

By nature, agents are sharks, willing to do anything to get the biggest deal, sign the best client and make the most money.

Falk was no different. He maneuvered his clients to his liking, leveraged executives with his elite clientele and wielded his immense power to get his players the contracts they wanted from the teams they hoped to play for.

Falk got Stephon Marbury out of Minnesota and into a New Jersey Nets uniform with a six-year, $70.8 million contract in hand. He got Allen Iverson a 10-year, $50 million shoe deal with Reebok as a rookie - the biggest deal of its kind at the time.

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