Executive Vice President and General Counsel
Chief Compliance Officer
National Basketball Association
Rick Buchanan is Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the NBA, and also serves as the league’s Chief Compliance Officer. He joined the NBA in 1993 as Assistant General Counsel, was named Deputy General Counsel in 1995, Vice President and General Counsel in 1999, Senior Vice President and General Counsel in 2001, and assumed his current title in 2006. He was named Chief Compliance Officer in 2010.

Buchanan is responsible for the legal affairs of the NBA, including collective bargaining with NBA players and referees, player discipline, the NBA anti-drug program, Board of Governors and Competition Committee matters, litigation, legislative matters, salary cap advice and enforcement, and team and arena issues. In his role as Chief Compliance Officer, Buchanan oversees the Code of Conduct applicable to all NBA employees, and is responsible for the league’s compliance program, including anti-gambling education and enforcement, and FCPA matters.

Buchanan is a 1985 graduate of Amherst College and a 1988 graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Buchanan was a clerk for Judge Kenneth W. Starr on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and then worked for four years as an attorney with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. At Covington, he represented the National Football League and the National Hockey League, among other clients. Buchanan has lectured on sports law at the Columbia, Georgetown, and Virginia schools of law.

Buchanan is a native of Seattle, Wash., and resides in New York City.

1/2012