Rudy Cline-Thomas: From NBA internship to ownership of Leeds United

The letters sent by Rudy Cline-Thomas to the NBA ran into double figures, all but one of them posted without reply. A student at Providence College in Rhode Island, his senior year was about to start and he hoped to fill the summer before it with an internship. Basketball floated his boat.

Reebok had drawn his attention too and a stint of work experience with the sportswear giant was easier logistically. It would be based in Stoughton, within reach of Cline-Thomas’ home in Washington, and after quick correspondence, Reebok invited him in. But the NBA and the lights of New York were what he wanted and at the very last minute, after weeks of silence, the association offered its final placement to him. Cline-Thomas was given 24 hours to accept and jumped on the chance.

In that instant the door opened to sport and business — two professions Cline-Thomas was equally and highly curious about. His persistence and the break it earned him could, by way of several other enterprises, take him into the boardroom at Leeds United shortly.

The Athletic has learned that as part of the pending takeover of Leeds by 49ers Enterprises, a deal which should complete in the next few weeks, Cline-Thomas is among the candidates for a position on the club’s board of directors, an executive role for a key figure in the investment group funding the acquisition. His appointment, if it materialises as anticipated, will become official once 49ers Enterprises has approval from the English Football League (EFL) for its 100 per cent buy-out.

Cline-Thomas is well known in business circles in the US, a spirited and savvy entrepreneur who worked as a basketball agent soon after graduating from Providence in finance and accounting, and whose business ideas led to him co-founding Mastry Ventures in 2021, a venture-capital firm based in New York. He is a member of the pool of main investors brought together by 49ers Enterprises in preparation for its takeover at Elland Road.

In England his name is less familiar, though Cline-Thomas is believed to have family ties to the city of Leeds. His parents originated from Sierra Leone before emigrating and settling long-term in the USA and Washington, where Cline-Thomas was born.

In America, his father worked in business and through him, Cline-Thomas caught the bug. He had been sent to study at Providence as a Martin Luther King scholar, a scheme created to support prospective students from ethnic-minority backgrounds, and with finance qualifications behind him, his NBA internship in New York in the early 2000s set everything rolling. He would later tell an audience of students at Providence that a tentative step into basketball “changed his life”.

Cline-Thomas loved the sport but was not good enough to chase a career in it. He knew a player who had been drafted into the NBA, Steve…