As NBA’s security chief, Baltimore native Leon Newsome will guard the pingpong balls that determine Victor Wembanyama’s home
When ESPN’ s broadcast of the lottery commences Tuesday evening, on one side of the picture, you’ ll see an Ernst& Young accountant handling the envelope that will tell the world where Wembanyama is headed. Before he guarded these sacred pingpong balls, Newsome was the second-ranking officer in the U.S. Secret Service, a special agent who had been responsible for...
The 19-year-old Frenchman has whetted NBA appetites like no prospect since LeBron James.
As such, the draft lottery that determines a professional destination for Victor Wembanyama, a 7-foot-2 wonder who sinks step-back 3s as readily as he swats opponents’ shots, will be among the most scrutinized in league history.
When ESPN’s broadcast of the lottery commences Tuesday evening, on one side of the picture, you’ll see an Ernst & Young accountant handling the envelope that will tell the world where Wembanyama is headed. On the other, you’ll see a taller, sturdier man with a sharp suit and a stern countenance.
That’s Leon Newsome, the NBA’s chief security officer.
Before he guarded these sacred pingpong balls, Newsome was the second-ranking officer in the U.S. Secret Service, a special agent who had been responsible for protecting Vice President Joe Biden and first lady Laura Bush. Before that, he was a hotly recruited football standout who spurned a Notre Dame scholarship in favor of a more scholarly life at Princeton. And before all of it, he was a high school star on the football fields, baseball diamonds and basketball courts of his native Baltimore.
Even then, those who knew him say, his 6-foot-6, 240-pound frame belied his understated grace.
“If you told me I needed to be protected by someone, he’d be at the top of my list,” said Tim Holley, who coached Newsome in all three sports at Gilman School. “He’s serious, not too serious, but he’s focused. He’s successful because of his intellect; the brawn is just an added feature.”
The draft lottery is a rare occasion for Newsome, 53, to be on camera after a career spent quietly aiding powerful people. Even now, he’s an anonymous face to most of those who pack the arenas he visits — New York’s Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center on Thursday — to make sure events are proceeding safely.
He left the Secret Service to take his NBA job in 2021, but for all the cool perks (he spoke recently on video with a wall of superstar’s jerseys hanging behind him), he said nothing can match being second in command of the agency that protects the president. In these cynical times, Newsome speaks of public service without a hint of irony.
“Being able to lead an organization that stands for character and integrity and honor, I don’t think anything professionally that I’ll do will surpass that,” he said.
Those who’ve known Newsome since his high school days were not surprised by the path he chose.
“I think he knew he was going places, and that, while he was a gifted athlete, that was not going to be his ultimate meal ticket,” Holley said. “He really did value his intellect more than he valued his physical attributes.”
Newsome was a fifth grader at Arlington Elementary in Northwest Baltimore, earning good grades but less good marks for comportment when a teacher said he needed to go somewhere he’d be more challenged.
Bill Greene, a Gilman administrator, took an interest in Newsome, who would thrive athletically and academically after he enrolled in the all-boys private school for sixth grade.
Teachers and coaches gave him the support he needed to mature, complementing his mother, Sarah, who still lives in Baltimore and was his most constant mentor (Newsome’s father died when he was 6 years old).
“You learn we’re all here in service of others,” he said.
Newsome was easy to spot on the football field, where his mobility and vast wingspan made him one of the top linebacker and tight end prospects in the country. As a senior, he returned an interception for a touchdown against mighty Poly to help clinch a conference championship. Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz wanted him badly, even though Holtz had already signed the nation’s top tight end, Derek Brown.
Enticing as that offer was, Newsome also had the option to attend Princeton, and former Yale and NFL star Calvin Hill, who had become a mentor when Newsome interned for the Orioles, advised him to think carefully about which path would be a better fit.
Perhaps his choice mystified those attuned only to football, but the Robert Frost quote Newsome chose for his senior yearbook page hinted at waters running deeper in his mind: “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
Though Newsome stood out as a defensive end at Princeton, injuries marred the end of his college career, and by that point, he was ready to step away from the field. He thought he’d go to law school until a friend mentioned the Secret Service as an option.
“It was easy to see he’d go into something like that,” said Sherm Bristow, Newsome’s football coach at Gilman. “He had that mentality. As an old football coach, I’m glad he didn’t go to Division I, big-time college football. He had so much else that he could do.”
Newsome applied successfully to the Secret Service and stepped into a vast world of protection and investigation that would occupy his attention for 26 years.
Newsome knows the image most people have of Secret Service agents — strapping guys wearing dark suits and sunglasses as they flank the president — but it was the breadth of the work, the complex web of personal relationships, that intrigued him.
As his career proceeded down a path far from the playing fields of his youth, Newsome found a renewed connection to sports through his three sons. The eldest, Grant, played left tackle at Michigan and now coaches tight ends for Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverines after a frightening leg injury ended his playing career. Middle son Garrett pitches for William & Mary while the youngest, Gaines, is a high school freshman in New Jersey, where the Newsomes (Leon met his wife, Kim, in the dining hall at Princeton) live.
He was a candidate to replace his friend, James Murray, as director of the Secret Service, but when the NBA came calling, Newsome, who had been a clutch-shooting power forward at Gilman, could not resist a job that sounded like tremendous fun.
“It wasn’t something that I went out there looking for,” he said. “But when an organization with a brand reputation like the NBA says they want to talk to you, you have that conversation.”
He has a hand in every major event the league holds, from Spain to Las Vegas to Abu Dhabi. Which brings us back to the draft lottery in Chicago.
The idea of high-powered team executives watching their fortunes rise and fall on the movements of pingpong balls in a lottery machine might seem comic, but Wembanyama could be the difference between championship contention and play-in desperation, so Tuesday evening’s drawing will be plenty serious. Newsome will make sure of it.
“Specifically with the lottery, it is ensuring the integrity of the process when it comes to the actual drawing of the balls and then the packaging of the envelopes, then making sure nothing happens between the time the envelopes leave the drawing room to the time the order is announced,” he said.
Family members and old classmates might send a few teasing texts when they see him up there on ESPN. “Of course,” he said, laughing.
But Newsome knows most people never get to stand a few feet away from such happenings — not to mention protect a future president — for a living.
“Having that opportunity, that front-row seat,” he said, “not many people get it.”
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