Steve Mills

Sports executive Stephen “Steve” Mills was born on October 6, 1959 in Rockville Centre, New York to Doris and Oliver Mills. In 1977, he graduated from Friends Academy in Glen Cove, New York. In 1981, he earned his A.B. degree in sociology from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was a member of the basketball team, the Princeton Tigers.

After graduating, Mills played professional basketball in Ecuador before working as a manager at the Chemical Bank in New York City from 1981 to 1984. That same year, Mills was hired as a national program manager and account executive for the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was promoted to vice president of special events in 1987 and vice president of basketball development in 1993. Mills then served as the executive vice president of the New York Knicks for two years before being hired as the president and chief operating officer of Madison Square Garden Sports from 2002 to 2009. In 2010, Mills co-founded and served as CEO of Athletes and Entertainers Wealth Management, LLC. Mills returned to the NBA in 2013 and served as president and general manager of the New York Knicks until 2020.

Active in the sports community, he served on the U.S.A. Basketball Board of Trustees and the NBA Collective Bargaining Task Force, the Labor Relations Committee for the NBA and WNBA, and on the board of governors and Global Inclusion Council for the New York Knicks. Mills also served on the board of trustees of Ariel Investments and as director and chair of the finance and tournaments committee for the Ladies Professional Golf Association in 2023.

Mills’ numerous honors include being named Black Enterprise magazine’s “Business Executive of the Year,” ranked at number sixteen on Sports Illustrated’s “101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports,” and Rainbow Push Coalition’s “Sports Executive of the Year.”

Mills and his wife, Beverly B. Mills, reside in Boca Raton, Florida. They have two adult daughters.

Stephen “Steve” Mills was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on July 18, 2024.