Terdema Ussery, Dallas Mavericks President, Resigns to Join Under Armour

After working in the Dallas Mavericks front office for nearly two decades, Terdema Ussery has left the team to take over as Under Armour's president of global sports categories, per Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com.

Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News reported that Floyd Jahner, Dallas' current chief financial officer, will assume Ussery's role when he officially departs.

In an official statement provided to Townsend, the Mavs confirmed the resignation of their president and chief executive officer after 18 years with the organization. The team praised Ussery's work behind the scenes toward the construction of the American Airlines Center, which opened in 2001, in addition to his other numerous other efforts.

"Under his direction, the club has more than tripled revenue and exponentially increased its media and digital footprint by establishing new and expanding existing media partnerships across multiple platforms," the statement also read. "Additionally, the Dallas Mavericks Foundation has distributed over $1 million to over forty agencies whose aim and mission is to improve the lives of those in need in the DFW metroplex."

Last year, Ussery was also among the candidates to replace Billy Hunter as executive director of the National Basketball Players Association. He eventually lost out to Michele Roberts.

Before arriving in Dallas in 1997, Ussery was president of Nike Sports Management, experience that will certainly come in handy when he joins his new employer. In a 2011 interview with Joseph Guinto for D Magazine, he explained what his job duties entailed:

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The idea was that we would take the top 20 of Nike's athletes, excluding Michael Jordan, and we'd turn them into a global brand. Alonzo Mourning, Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders, Scottie Pippin, Ken Griffey Jr., Roy Jones Jr. Guys like that. Nike was spending a lot of money to position these athletes, and they didn't want the value of that diluted by Coca-Cola or McDonald's or whomever else they were doing business with.

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It's a safe bet Under Armour will want Ussery to use similar strategies as the company looks to build the profile for many top athletes under its banner.

Meanwhile, the Mavericks are losing one of the driving forces behind their commercial rise over the past decade-plus.