NBA Players Pick a Tough Executive Director

During the month of July, the NBA Player’s Association elected Attorney Michele Roberts as their first African-American female executive director, putting her in place to help them negotiate business and other concerns with the league’s billionaire owners.

Among her key concerns to go to battle over with the owners in upcoming negotiations were; the idea of a player’s salary cap, maximum player contracts, rookie pay scales, a new 20-year-old age limit, the league’s increase in television revenue, the rumors team revenue losses from some of the owners, a 50-50 revenue split between players and owners, the public response to the perceived greed of athletes, and equality negotiating leverage.

And boy did she speak strongly, calling the player’s salary cap and maximum contracts “incredibly un-American,” rookie pay scales not being “paid what you’re otherwise worth,” an age restriction offensive to someone’s “ability to make a living,” while calling the owners group a “monopoly.” When discussing the idea of maximum contracts for individual players and a salary cap for the amount of the team, these are legitimate concerns when you stop to think about the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls being able to pay their team and players much more than Milwaukee, Memphis and Minnesota.

So owners had to agree to create ways to keep the money game equal among the 30 teams, while also being able to pay role players more than just peanuts in relation to the stars.