🏆 Basketball Was the Vehicle, Not the Destination

Pat Connaughton is a two-sport professional athlete and NBA Champion currently with the Charlotte Hornets. During an accomplished basketball and baseball career at the University of Notre Dame, where he helped lead the men’s basketball team to its only ACC Championship in program history, he was selected in the 4th round (121st overall) of the 2014 MLB Draft by the Baltimore Orioles. One year later, upon graduation from the University, he heard his name called once again - this time in the 2015 NBA Draft, ultimately choosing to pursue basketball at the professional level.

He is also the Co-Founder of Three Leaf Partners, the real estate development firm he launched with Matt Burow, focused on creating lasting impact through projects that bring together athletes, business leaders, and community partners. Through this work, he is building a company centered on impact that supports communities and delivers long-term value.

In 2016, Pat founded the Pat Connaughton Foundation, built on the pillars of Courts, and Character, with a mission to expand access to athletics for the next generation of student-athletes. The foundation reflects his commitment to paying forward the opportunities he was given and continues to grow its impact through court donations and refurbishments, clinics, scholarships, and community-based programming. To date, the PCF has refurbished or donated 35 courts with five more planned/underway,, totaling more than $3.6 million in donations. It has also hosted 31 clinics and will have granted eight scholarships by the end of 2026.

He approaches his NBA career not as a finish line, but as a platform, using it to support and expand the work he has been intentionally building since college.

The Job Sites Came Before the Courts

Pat did not discover business after basketball; he discovered it on construction sites as a kid, working alongside his father and developing something many athletes spend years trying to build later: a tangible understanding of how places are built and communities are shaped. “Basketball is what I love to do,” he says, “but it’s not going to last forever. So how am I using it as a vehicle to build something for my life after basketball?”

That mindset did not emerge after a long NBA career. It was formed early, sharpened at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, and further shaped by watching ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary, “Broke.” The film crystallized what he did not want his story to become. From that point on, every opportunity basketball created became a chance to learn, not just to show up.

Two Sports, One Focus

Before he was a full-time NBA player, Pat was balancing two elite athletic paths at once. Baseball gave him another professional opportunity, but more importantly, it reinforced the direction he already felt pulled toward: building something bigger than sports.

“The signing bonus from the MLB really poured gas on that fire,” he says, referring to his business ambitions, not his athletic ones.

The ability to manage two high-level sport commitments simultaneously also gave him something most business professionals spend years developing: compressed time management. As he often emphasizes, everyone has the same 24 hours in a day; the difference lies in how they are used. That discipline translates directly into how he operates today, coordinating business activity across Zoom calls on planes, meetings on the road, and windows of time that other players might treat as downtime.

Three Leaf Partners: Community as the Product

Three Leaf Partners was not built on a theme. It was built on a thesis: to bring together athletes, business executives, and community partners around real estate projects that create impact beyond the structure itself. Pat co-founded the firm with Matt Burow, and while the team leads day-to-day execution, he drives the overall strategy.

The mission is rooted in creating a lasting impact on the communities and people they serve through real estate, with a belief that the outcomes should extend far beyond the physical structures themselves. That framing traces back to where he grew up, the people who built within his community, and a commitment he made early on that if he ever made it, he would give back to the people and places that shaped him. Real estate, it turns out, is the instrument that allows that promise to be put into practice.

To date, Three Leaf Partners has led 23 projects across four states, representing more than $621 million in total project value.

The Championship as a Blueprint for Impact

When Pat talks about the kind of impact he wants to have long term, he does not point to a development deal or a financial milestone. He points to the 2021 NBA Championship with the Milwaukee Bucks. Seventeen players with different backgrounds, motivations, and experiences came together around a single goal, delivering something the city would remember.

“Every individual is different, but came together around a common goal,” he says. He calls it “impact winning,” the idea that the most meaningful outcomes extend beyond the individuals who create them and into the communities they serve. That mental model shapes how he thinks about Three Leaf Partners, his foundation, and the legacy tied to his father’s name.

Access Is the Asset, Time Is the Budget

Pat’s advice to athletes is specific and structurally honest. The access that comes with playing professionally is temporary and underused. "Take advantage of the access you have to business professionals," he says. "They will want to meet with you." Most athletes burn that window. He has spent his career converting it.

For young professionals not coming from sports, the message shifts slightly but stays rooted in the same principle. Time management is not a soft skill, it is the prerequisite. "Schedule your time to directly align with achieving your goals." And underneath both messages is something quieter but just as important: how you treat people in every room determines which rooms you get invited back into.

Leaving Something Worth the Name

Pat’s foundation was built on a personal debt. He learned to play basketball at Fidelity House in Arlington, Massachusetts, and he has never forgotten what that access and the people there meant for who he became. In many ways, the foundation’s work has now come full circle. With support from a donation from the PCF, Fidelity House recently completed a large-scale renovation, helping deliver a brand-new gym for the next generation of kids to learn, compete, and grow.

Youth sports participation is declining, burdened by negative experiences with programs that don’t have kids’ best interests at heart. The foundation exists to push back against that, designed to give the next generation the same foundation he had.

His motivation now has a second layer. “How I represent my father and his last name and how I now want to set an example for my son.” Business, philanthropy, and legacy are not separate tracks for Pat. They are the same track, running in the same direction.