Life on the Run (20 page)

The early days of the Players Association were rough, just as in any other union. Owners applied pressure, threatened, and advised players against joining together. They were unsuccessful. Finally, they recognized the union and in 1967 signed a collective bargaining agreement providing for a pension. During the next several years players made significant gains at the negotiating table. Black players, who are the leaders and form the majority of the union, found it easy to doubt the lofty promises offered by owners as substitutes for meeting player demands. Many white players, accustomed to father/son relationships with white coaches, general managers, and owners, hesitated at first but then slowly realized that major gains were possible only if everyone stayed together. The highlights of our achievements are easily understood. We obtained per diem money, severance pay, disability insurance, medical insurance, increased pension benefits, better playing conditions, first-class air travel and moving expenses. Simultaneously we began a licensing program which generates large annual sums from various product endorsements made by the union and its members; the proceeds of which go into a fund to be distributed to players ten years after their retirement. But, our most serious effort during these years was to preserve the rudimentary stirrings of competition which the second league had brought to players. Around 1969 there were whispers that the two leagues would merge, as the football leagues had in 1966. To prevent that, all the players in the NBA entered into an unprecedented class action lawsuit against the owners. The suit sought an injunction barring a merger and a judgment eradicating all existent restrictions on a player’s right to move freely from job to job in the practice of his profession. When the judge granted an injunction, the owners petitioned the U.S. Congress for an exemption to the antitrust laws. After lengthy testimony from all interested parties, the Senate Anti-Trust Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee issued a report which recommended that no exemption be granted until the reserve system of player control was totally abolished. I will never forget the day Senator John Tunney told us he opposed the merger. He said that had his father, Gene, not been able to end restrictive agreements with promoters and managers, he would have lost the bulk of his million dollar earnings from his two fights with Jack Dempsey. “An athlete, like any other American, should be free,” he said, “as free as my father was.” Needless to say, the owners who had, I heard, spent almost a million dollars in their lobbying efforts, ceased to push for an exemption in Congress. It was clear that the exemption could be obtained only after meeting the players’ objections on the issue of player movement. The player-owner confrontation is now back in the courts. There have been several efforts to settle the case, but in all of them when it was decision time the owners would not accept free player movement. The result is a collision course for eighteen basketball businessmen and two hundred players.

Throughout the existence of the Players Association, the general counsel has been Lawrence Fleischer, who works for one-third the salary of his counterparts in baseball and football. He was a schoolyard basketball player in the Bronx during the era of the championship teams at CCNY and LIU. He was a leftist in politics during his youth, a graduate of Harvard Law School at 22, and a financial vice-president of a major U.S. corporation at 34. Working for the association allows the concurrence of his idealistic drive, his childhood passion, and his knowledge of big business. Without his honesty and guidance, I can imagine that players’ rights would still be ignored and benefits non-existent.

I suppose it was inevitable that the big business of basketball should be countered by the big labor of players, and if the conflict between the two becomes intractable, no doubt big government will intercede. Sports are followed by more Americans than practically any other issue (except perhaps war and the economy) and it arouses fierce passions. When the player-owner dispute really angers the fan he will demand action from his elected representatives, who will take to the airwaves. (Any politician knows sports is a high visibility issue.) The result will probably be a government commission set up to control or regulate professional sports. Ultimately it would not surprise me to see municipalities or states owning teams, thus going back to sports ownership patterns last seen in the 1890s.

All in all, though, the player has benefited handsomely from the competition of two leagues. He is being paid more than ever before. The average salary in the NBA is $91,000, with many players making more than $150,000. The question is the same for every newly enriched player. Who should he trust with his money? There is no shortage of eager advisers now that basketball has reached the financial big time. They lurk around schoolyards and on college campuses. Many specialize in one thing only—persuasion. A successful lawyer doesn’t have time to play the courting game with 20-year-old kids. Thus, novices and crooks swarm to potentially wealthy young players as bees to honey. Many players have lost money unnecessarily. In some cases agents took fees as high as 20 percent, up front, before the player got anything. If a contract called for $200,000 over four years the agent got $40,000 before the player got anything. Other operators used their player-clients’ money to buy inflated assets in which they themselves had an interest. Frequently tax-shelter investments proved to be economically unsound. After the Internal Revenue Service investigated, they also proved to be unsatisfactory as shelters. So the player ended up with a worthless asset that sometimes had accumulated bills and with a lien on future earnings to pay past due taxes. With these abuses it is understandable how some athletes have discovered that the million-dollar contract of yesterday is virtually worthless today.

During the next few years there are bound to be scandals involving mismanagement of funds by agents. Illegality in investments often takes time to surface. The real tragedy lies in those athletes who will discover only at the end of their careers that their advisers were corrupt. Gradually, through a process of painful trial and error, most players will settle with good counsel.

“Total service management” provides for the receipt of an athlete’s check by the agent who pays all the player’s bills and sends him a monthly allowance. Everything is prepared for the athlete by the agent’s office, from insurance to taxes, from corporate plans to investments, from budgets to marriage contracts. Occasionally the athlete will be consulted about the general direction of his portfolio and the degree of risk desired, but rarely does the agent’s office consult him on every investment. Walt Frazier is a believer in total service management. In fact that’s one specialty offered by his firm, Walt Frazier Enterprises. But W.F.E. makes it a point to consult clients on every investment; that way, if they lose, they shoulder some of the responsibility. Frazier has 50 clients. “We provide a complete package,” he says. “What the company is good for is holding guys back. If you want to buy a house or a car you have to contact the company first because you might not be able to afford it. For example, I wanted a Rolls Royce two or three years before I got it. Guys got to learn that some things you just have to wait for.”

Earl Monroe believes in the opposite kind of management. He hires specific people to do specific things. He pays his own bills. About the plight of the younger player and the alternative of total service management he says, “I think a guy has to do something for himself. It’s not good for guys coming out of school to put everything in their agents’ hands. They should find out things for themselves. That way if something happens you’re not left out in the cold. I know some guys that couldn’t read their account books and what not, even if they were to go to the agent and ask to look at them. If somebody audited the books for them they’d say, ‘Wow, I’ve been getting ripped off here.’ You have to handle your money to be able to handle your money.”

After my meeting with the tax lawyer, I drive back to the hotel during rush hour. The pace of the traffic on the freeway in Los Angeles reminds me of giant turtles moving in mud. Cars—bumper to bumper—with only one person in many of them. A man in the car next to me reads a book as he commutes. Few drivers leave their windows down. Rush hour rock stars move their lips, singing along with the latest hit that blasts from their car radios. In the distance I see snow peaked mountains. A strong March wind has blown away most of the smog, leaving the valley with an atmosphere that conveys what Los Angeles must have been like before it became the nation’s dream fix and/or exhaust pipe.

DeBusschere and I have an Italian dinner with a screenwriter and later go to a party at a female movie star’s rambling house, set high in the hills overlooking Los Angeles. My natural suspicion for movie people lessens. I enjoy myself, marvel at the poses assumed by the guests, and assume a few of my own. I never really overcome my uneasiness but leave with a pleasant memory and a touch of fancy for the hostess.

I never sense much professional kinship with movie actors. They have no feel for a live audience or knowledge of the instant gratification it delivers. Even politicians know more about the “crowd.”

Shortly after Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe married, she went on a tour of military bases in Korea while he remained in Japan. She returned ecstatic and said, “Joe, there were 50,000 soldiers applauding and screaming. It was wonderful. You just don’t know how it felt.” Joe looked at her, smiled and replied, “Yes, I do.”

Stage actors are more my compatriots, for their work, like mine, disappears in the air as soon as it lives. The final curtain makes it just a memory. As years pass people either forget the performance or distort it beyond recognition. The late show provides us with no reminders of our accomplishments.

The experience of basketball players and stage actors differs, though, during the few minutes after a performance when the performer stands before his audience and receives its applause. Sitting in a theater, clapping enthusiastically, I have a tinge of envy for the actor or musician or dancer taking his bows. Chills course up my spine. I sense I know what he feels, but I’m not sure. “Mass love vibes,” a friend of mine calls that applause. At first the performer takes his bows as a part of the show. Then as the noise reaches a crescendo his professionalism breaks and he receives the audience as a lover. He smiles; he waves; he bows; he throws kisses; he cries; he laughs—he accepts as long as the audience gives. The basketball player, on the other hand, allows himself limited, fleeting contact with his audience, even after a magnificent evening. Occasionally he is applauded when he comes out of a game but he rarely responds. There are no curtain calls. The athlete is taught early never to acknowledge the audience. He runs from the court and crowds into the locker room with his team. Just once I would like to stand at center court after a great game and take my bows and feel the “love vibes” other performers experience. I would like to accept that audience as a lover for just that night without fear that it will turn on me tomorrow.

I
MANAGE TO SLEEP UNTIL
9:15
THE NEXT MORNING
.
IN THE
hallway outside my room stands a man about 25 who shows up every time we’re in Los Angeles. He is holding publicity photos and magazine articles about me which he asks to have autographed.

“What do you do with all these autographs?” I say, signing four pictures.

“Aw, I don’t know,” he says, “I just collect them.”

“Trade them ever?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, “I trade them with the other kids.”

As the elevator takes me downstairs, Danny Whelan gets on at the sixth floor. He is wearing Florsheim shoes, gray double-knit pants, a brown sports jacket, a wash-and-wear white shirt and his omnipresent plain dark tie. He walks with a pronounced bounce, newspaper under his arm, a cigar in his mouth. In his job Danny is a rock of dependability and away from it he likes the good life, insisting always on first class. Flights, hotels, restaurants, and vacations must be the best. He never mentions money personally but he freely talks about the public’s money that crooked politicians pilfer. His penchant for offering his own succinct interpretation of the latest public scandal, and his appreciation of luxury led players to nickname him “Big Time.”

Danny is a man of routines. He rises every morning at 8
A.M
. He loves the New York skyline and takes a Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan four times a year. He also frequently visits the major tourist spots: St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Wall Street, the Stock Exchange, Statue of Liberty, Fifth Avenue, and Tiffany’s. He has been to the top of the Empire State Building twenty-three times in seven years. Every day we’re in New York, rain or shine, Danny walks the thirty-five blocks from his apartment to the Garden and the thirty-five blocks back. On game days he only walks to the Garden, preferring to take a cab back at night, to his favorite eatery, P. J. Clarke’s saloon.

His road habits, evolved over thirty years as a trainer in professional sport, have a continuity despite the changing environment. He begins each day perusing the morning newspaper and watching the “Today Show” with a breakfast of coffee and orange juice. If he notices that there are any big criminal trials in process, locally, and one looks particularly colorful, he will go sit in the courtroom for two or three hours listening to the story of the case unfold. Always, though—early if there’s a trial, later if not—Danny takes a walk. Rarely selecting a destination he paces the streets of a town for three hours. He takes no other exercise. I kid him, calling him the Irish Harry Truman.

Holzman has scheduled a film for 11
A.M
. The Knicks tape each team in their first visit to New York. Unless a team plays in our division or becomes a probable play-off opponent, the early season film replaces scouting for the rest of the year. Films serve an invaluable function only in the play-offs. Then, when two teams might meet seven times in three weeks, they reveal weaknesses that are missed in the heat of a game and they suggest possible adjustments in style. Today, during the regular season, particularly with a West Coast team, the film’s purpose becomes more psychological than tactical. Injuries, trades, and rookie development have forced changes in the Lakers’ lineup since their visit to New York in November. The film will give us little hard information. Still, the hour with the team, together, watching basketball will help us to begin thinking about tonight’s game and the other weekend games in San Francisco and Seattle.