Rubin was a late addition to the group, he says, "placed" there by former NBA commissioner David Stern.
The league was facing a long lockout, and Stern was still acting as the owner of the New Orleans franchise after George Shinn went bankrupt and was forced to sell it back to the league. Rubin was a guy the NBA had done business with since 1999.
"David said, 'Michael, I thought about this. You need to go in and be a real partner,'" Rubin recalls. "I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'Because if anything goes wrong, you work for f---ing me and I can control you. And so you're f---ing doing this, because I need someone in this group that I control.'"
We've been used by the NBA.