NY Times: It's The Real Beginning Of The End For The NBA

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

          January 4, 1999

          SPORTS OF THE TIMES

          It's the Real Beginning of the End for the N.B.A.

  

          By WILLIAM C. RHODEN

              NEW YORK -- The media campaign began the last two
              weeks with full-page newspaper advertisements. The
          blitz continues Monday night on "Larry King Live," when
          Billy Hunter, the executive director of the players'
          association, and Patrick Ewing, the union's president,
          bring its case before the nation.

          With only three days to go before the league's deadline
          for canceling the season, Hunter and Ewing are
          expanding the battle against National Basketball
          Association owners from the bargaining table to the
          court of public opinion, where up to now the players
          have been crucified. The NBA has done its typically
          masterful job of presenting its side and putting the
          players in the worst possible light.

          "You go around, you realize that people are either
          misinformed, uninformed or they refuse to be informed,"
          Hunter said Saturday. "The perception is that, one,
          we're on strike, two, that the players are being
          unfair, or unreasonable."

          Hunter -- whose players are locked out, not on strike
          -- was asked if he thought about how history might
          portray him if the unthinkable occurs and the entire
          season is lost. For NBA Commissioner David Stern, it
          would be part of a long legacy, but this is the first
          major chapter in Hunter's professional sports
          biography.

          "That's something I haven't even considered," Hunter
          said. "That's the farthest thing from my mind. All I'm
          concerned about is the here and now."

          That may well be, but Hunter has introduced a distinct
          and consistent civil-rights motif to the
          seven-month-old lockout; a We-Shall-Not-Be-Moved
          obstinacy by the players. The civil-rights analogy is
          dismissed by critics as posturing at worst; as, at
          best, an attempt by Hunter to use race as a superficial
          bond to keep the players unified. But movements are not
          sustained by posturing. Instead, they take strength
          from the resistance of the structure they push up
          against.

          In this case the NBA owners, figuring they only had to
          lean on players to win concessions, anticipated an easy
          game. "I can see why," Hunter said. "The perception of
          professional athletes, especially basketball players,
          because they've never been challenged before, is that
          they weren't up to the task. That if you put a gun to
          their heads they would collapse. But that hasn't
          happened. And that's a quandary now."

          The unexpected resolve shown by the players may, at
          least for some, have its roots in the fact that they
          have gotten beyond the immediacy of money, to an
          appreciation of what came before them and a concern for
          players coming after them. They've grasped broader
          issues of principle. During the protests of the 1950s,
          the issue was not sitting beside white customers at
          lunch counters -- it was sitting where one pleased. The
          issue for the players is not just splitting $2 billion
          in revenue, but sharing the profits of an empire that
          each side created -- one with money, the other with
          muscle.

          Hunter, 55, helped players understand that, in large
          part by explaining that the foundation of his own
          resolve goes beyond a labor dispute or an ego battle
          with Stern. His foundation is a deeply rooted family
          tradition of battling for liberty.

          Hunter's great great grandfather was William Still, one

          of the most respected black operatives on the
          Underground Railroad in the East. In the years leading
          to the Civil War, Still led Philadelphia's Vigilance
          Committee, which provided assistance to fugitive
          slaves. He was born free, but both his parents had been
          slaves. Still's mother escaped before he was born; his
          father bought his way out of slavery and died free.

          Hunter first learned about his heritage while he was an
          undergraduate at Syracuse, where he played football.
          Hunter led a drive to boycott games against Southern
          schools with segregated stadiums.

          While owners certainly don't have to worry about their
          players suddenly becoming radical, the lockout may have
          roused one or two sleeping giants.

          "Historically, professional athletes -- especially
          African-American athletes, those who have made it --
          have always been apolitical," Hunter said. "Everybody's
          always told them that you've got to just play ball,
          keep your nose down, stay out of trouble and you're
          going to be all right. All of a sudden owners see that
          some of the ballplayers are talking about standing on
          principle, they're talking about history and
          experiences their people had in terms of struggles.

          "For the majority of players, the lockout has been a
          wake-up call. Having missed two months and some play,
          they understand that this game is tangential. This is a
          taste of what it will be like when your career ends."

          Is this the beginning of the end? No one is sure, not
          even Hunter. "Ballplayers will continue to receive
          substantial salaries, but they just won't be
          phenomenal," Hunter said. "They'll just be more
          controlled. Maybe that's what it means."

          Rest assured: this struggle won't be over when the
          lockout ends. Things may get better, but they'll never
          be the same.


                Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company