New Union Head Roberts Sets Course for NBA Disaster

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The NBA finally has a new head for their Union. She officially took over the post in January, succeeding Derek Fisher, who manned the players through the last lockout. Her name is Michele Roberts. She has been hailed as one of the smartest and best trial lawyers in the United States. She has an amazing track record as a lawyer and a thinker. So when she released comments in an interview with ESPN (speaking publicly about basketball for the first time), everyone knew her comments would ring through the halls. But I don’t think anyone could have imagined the incredible and uninformed cr*p that spewed out of her mouth.

Let’s look at some of her quotes:

“Why don’t we have the owners play half the games? There would be no money if not for the players.” Or, “Let’s call it what it is. There. Would. Be. No. Money,” she added, pausing for emphasis.

Let me call her statement what it is: fu*king ignorant! This is the first indication to me that she has no earthly idea what occurred in the 2011 lockout. For those who forget, let me refresh your memory. The owners felt no pinch and no rush to end the lockout. Some of them were actually happy with it. Why? Because every day that went by, the players came one day closer to breaking. Some of the owners had actually been losing money anyway, so missing games was well worth a new collective bargaining agreement that benefited them. Meanwhile, after just two weeks without their paychecks, players started publicly talking about how they needed the lockout to end, how they needed to ‘pay their bills’ and so on. Perhaps some people are overlooking the fact that not all NBA players are rich. Many make less than one million dollars per year. That might seem like a lot to normal people, but these are not normal people. They are athletes, with bills for cars and houses that are proportional to their salaries. What would happen if your boss didn’t pay YOU for a month? That is what some of the players experienced… they didn’t like it very much.

This also grossly misses the truth: the players need the owners MUCH more than the owners need the players. During the last lockout a few players started talking about creating their own league, ditching the NBA and creating a new league with new rules for salary and everything else. Do you know what they found out by this? (Shockingly) it turns out that players are millionaires while owners are billionaires. The owners have spent BILLIONS of dollars over the course of at least four decades building infrastructure, advertising and everything else that makes a league possible. The players are important- but they are much more replaceable than the owners. Carmelo and a few other guys explored this option during the last lockout and quickly came to their senses. If somehow the player’s union got all their guys not to accept a new CBA, two things would happen.

European players would happily take the NBA salaries and come to the states. Then, some of the players would file to disband the union because they weren’t getting proper representation. There would be a lull for a while, but eventually fans would come around to the new league full of Europeans and former NBA players now in revolt. Roberts’ point above, “There would be no money if not for the players” is patently false and has been dis-proven time and time again. The truth is that the players need the owners far more.

Roberts was just getting started. Next she addressed the age limit in the NBA. “It doesn’t make sense to me that you’re suddenly eligible and ready to make money when you’re 20, but not when you’re 19, not when you’re 18,” she said.

Okay, first off, players that age DO have options other than the NBA. If they really are good enough at basketball, there are a dozen or more professional teams in Europe that would take them and pay them at least a living wage. They could do that for two years and then, if they are really good enough, would have no problem getting drafted into the NBA. Brandon Jennings went this route and still was a lottery pick once he was old enough. More and more stories are coming out about players having a positive experience going this route.

The second problem, one of which Roberts clearly has no concern, is that when teenagers come into the NBA, the overall quality of the game decreases. Anyone remember the 1990′s? This happens simply because it gets filled with players who are not physically ready and just aren’t good enough. Not to mention, for everyone of those 18 year-olds that actually make the NBA, 50 others forfeit their amateur status for the draft and can no longer accept the scholarships they had already been offered to go play in college, leaving them even worse off. Of course, why should this matter to Roberts? Her clients are the ones actually IN the NBA.

Then there is the fact that the NBA just got a new television deal that will pay them billions. Since the salary cap in the NBA is tied directly to its income, the first year of the new contract would raise the salary cap by as much as 35 percent in one season. To counter this, owners and players have talked about a way of smoothing out the increase to make it more profitable for all. Roberts doesn’t care for that.

“You can call it a ‘spike,’ but it’s also just an accurate reflection of what the revenue is,” she said. “At first glance, [cap smoothing] is not that attractive, I won’t lie. But we’re studying it to figure out if there really is some advantage for players.”

Ms. Roberts, please do go study this right now. In doing so, you will realize that smoothing out the rise in the cap is best for all. Should there be a one-year-spike, it would benefit the players who stand to be free agents at that time (a small portion of her constituency). A handful of players – and agents – would receive the majority of the direct benefit from the cap rising, while everyone else would have to wait for their current contracts to expire before receiving any benefit.

Then Ms. Roberts addressed the length of the NBA season, which some have said is too long.

“Every time a player gets hurt, I think, my God, they really are pushing their bodies,” she said. “And back-to-backs, those are the ones I really find disturbing. … So the answer, of course, is that everybody wants a shorter season. The tension is, Will that mean less money? And that’s something we need to talk about and think about. … I don’t think it would hurt the game to shorten the season.”

Allow me to answer her question for her. YES, that will mean less money for the players. The TV contract is very specific in terms of what the networks get for what the NBA gives them. If they get to televise fewer games, they don’t have to pay the NBA for the ones they don’t. The NBA, and therefore the players, would indeed lose money. It should also be pointed out that in most professional leagues around the world, teams and players often play between 5-7 games every week and do just fine (just saying).

Roberts gets one thing right when she says, “No one wants to say it out loud, but it’s a monopoly. And were there alternatives, they wouldn’t get away with it.”

She’s right. It is a monopoly for the NBA owners. If there were alternatives, they wouldn’t get away with it. So Ms. Roberts, I’m going to go wait for the players or some other group to build what has been built in the NBA over time. Call me in 40 years when they get that worked out. In the meantime, the owners you hate so much will move on to other ventures and keep making money while all your constituents can go find new jobs and most of them will go bankrupt. Sounds like Roberts has a plan.