The Right Man For The Job:

Why Was the Ideal NBPA President

Tom Primosch

Haverford

Department of History

Advisor: Professor Linda Gerstein

First Reader: Professor Linda Gerstein

Second Reader: Professor Bethel Saler

May 2021 Table of Contents

Abstract...... 3

Introduction...... 4

Part One: Robertson’s Experiences Growing Up

Early Years...... 8

Crispus Attucks and The Klan...... 9

Robertson’s High School Stardom...... 14

Mayor Clark’s Decision...... 15

Part Two: Robertson’s College Days

Branch McCracken’s Insult...... 17

Robertson’s NCAA Tenure...... 22

The Territorial ...... 24

Part Three: The NBA’s History of Racism

Abe Saperstein’s Globetrotters...... 27

The Quota System...... 32

The Stokes Game...... 36

Part Four: Robertson’s Actions As Union President

A Brief History of the Players Union...... 39

Robertson’s Status as a Labor Leader...... 42

The Robertson Lawsuit...... 48

The Robertson Settlement...... 52

Conclusion...... 57

Bibliography...... 64

2 Abstract

This thesis aims to showcase why Oscar Robertson was the ideal person to take over as president of the National Players Association (NBPA) in 1965. It also argues that the current state of NBA free agency would not be possible if Robertson had not led a lawsuit against the NBA in 1970. During the and , working conditions in the NBA were subpar and the meant that NBA owners had the authority to keep a player on their team for as long as the owner desired. NBA players were not allowed to negotiate new contracts with other teams unless the team that drafted them renounced their rights. Conditions were particularly abysmal for Black players because in addition to the lack of a pension, inadequate health care, and minimal agency, they also had to deal with racism from fans, coaches, and owners. In 1965, after Celtics player Tommy Heinsohn stepped down from his role as president of the NBPA, it was clear that the new president needed to be someone who could take on an active and forceful role as a catalyst for change. The new president needed to be able to fight back against the reserve clause, promote solidarity within the union, and advocate for better benefits for both active and retired players. Ideally it would also be a Black player who was talented enough to command the respect of his fellow players and the owners. This was important because the league was becoming increasingly filled with Black players and the new union president needed to reflect the NBA’s shifting demographics. As a Black superstar who was well aware of the poor working conditions in the NBA, and who possessed a keen understanding of the bad faith arguments that the owners continuously made to try and uphold the reserve clause, Robertson was the perfect candidate. His willingness to be combative and stand up for what he was fighting for made him a thorn in the side of the owners. His days spent enduring racism at Crispus Attucks High School and the University of had informed his understanding of the reserve clause as an issue of both labor and race. He was fully aware that it was necessary to prevent a merger between the NBA and the American Basketball Association (ABA) since the existence of two leagues was the only way that players were able to negotiate with multiple teams and earn more favorable contracts. With the lawsuit in 1970, Robertson, along with NBPA general counsel , sought to stop the NBA and the ABA from merging, while also challenging the reserve clause. Regardless of whether or not he foresaw the NBA becoming the multibillion-dollar industry that it is today, Robertson was fundamentally cognizant of the fact that the players were not getting what they deserved and that something had to be done about it. This thesis will show how Robertson entered into the role of NBPA president, challenged the NBA owners, and came out on top.

3 Introduction

Nearly eleven years ago, LeBron James commanded the undivided attention of the entire basketball world. In 2010, after spending seven seasons with the Cavaliers, James entered into unrestricted free agency for the first time in his career. He had been named the

NBA’s Most Valuable Player in 2008 and 2009 and a frenzied bidding war was destined to occur once the 2010 season ended. The Cavaliers were desperate to retain James’ services but other franchises, including the Knicks and the , were eagerly waiting for the opportunity to offer him a lucrative contract. The unrestricted free agency period began promptly on July 1st and with every passing hour, the rumors around James’ potential destination continued to swirl. Unrestricted free agency had existed in the NBA since 1988 but there had never been a scenario where a player as dominant as James was being courted by so many different teams. This of course is not news to anyone who follows the NBA, but it’s important to contextualize how monumental a moment this was in basketball history. James chose to announce his new team during an hour-long television program, aptly dubbed The Decision. This was also a historic moment since there was no precedent for an NBA player announcing his free agency destination during a live television broadcast that had been specifically put together for him to announce where he was signing. A Black athlete turning his free agency decision into a bit of spectacle was a new occurrence in the American sports world and, as you might imagine,

James’ decision was not well-received. Cavaliers fans were understandably upset that he was choosing to play for another team but it was the method James chose for his announcement that generated the most anger. Many people felt that there was too much fanfare and that it was absurd for ESPN to devote an entire hour to an announcement that ultimately took less than a to make. Sportswriter Don Ohlmeyer described The Decision as “an affront to humility,

4 loyalty, moderation...and a celebration of greed, ego and excess.”1 Post

Leonard Shapiro called James “egomaniacal”, which is an interesting way to describe someone who took the $2 million dollars in ad revenue that was generated from The Decision and donated it to charity.23 Cavaliers owner penned a rather ridiculous letter to LeBron, which included a statement of his belief that “some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there”, along with a description of James’ actions as “heartless and callous.”4

Perhaps the most eye-opening sentence in Gilbert’s irate message came when he called James’ decision a “shocking act of disloyalty,” a phrase that paints James as a cruel traitor who owed the

Cavaliers something, even though it was the Cavs franchise that had been indebted to James ever since he was taken with the number one overall pick in 2003.5 The magnitude of what James did was summed up by historian Jamal Ratchford when he wrote that James “challenged the normative player-owner-spectator relationship” and “asserted control and ownership of his present and future.”6 Ratchford was correct in his contention that James challenged the relationship between player, owner, and spectator, and it was precisely that challenging of the player-owner-spectator relationship that caused Gilbert to become so outraged. Gilbert’s reaction was one of disgust and disbelief. How dare his employee take control of his employment

1 Don Ohlmeyer, “The Decision Dilemma,” ESPN, July 21, 2010, https://www.espn.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=ohlmeyer_don&id=5397113 2 Leonard Shapiro, “Coverage of LeBron James's Decision Brings ESPN's Integrity Into Question Yet Again,” Washington Post, July 13, 2010, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/13/AR2010071305908.html 3 Martenzie Johnson, “How LeBron James used the the Decision to raise more than $2 million for the Boys & Girls Club,” The Undefeated, July 8, 2020, https://theundefeated.com/features/how-lebron-james-used-the-decision-to-raise-millions-for-the-boys-girls-club/ 4 Dan Gilbert, “Open Letter to Fans from Cavaliers Majority Owner Dan Gilbert,” ESPN, July 8, 2010, https://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=5365704 5 Gilbert has since deleted the letter from the Cavaliers’ team website where it was originally posted. 6 Jamal L. Ratchford, "The LeBron James Decision in the Age of Obama,” in From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line, ed. Chris Lamb (Lincoln; London: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 585, doi:10.2307/j.ctt1d9nhwr.25.

5 situation and go to the destination that he felt was best for him and his family? Fundamentally,

The Decision was an example of what happens when an NBA player has the power of true free agency. LeBron James may have taken the process of free agency to an extreme with the ESPN show but that was his choice to make. Ironically, the displeasure that was voiced after The

Decision was not unlike the criticism that came more than half a century ago, back when the subject of free agency was first starting to be broached by NBA players.

There is a direct line that can be drawn between Dan Gilbert’s harsh words and the collective attitude NBA owners held towards free agency during the 1950s and 1960s. Before

1976, NBA players did not have much agency at all, let alone free agency. Thanks to the reserve clause, NBA franchises had the ability to re-sign a player anytime his contract expired, preventing that player from getting the chance to negotiate a new contract with a different team and effectively forcing him to stay with the franchise that had drafted him if he wanted to continue playing in the NBA. This meant that if a team drafted a player, the only way that player would ever play for a different franchise was if the team renounced its right to sign the player and allowed him to go. The reserve clause was the crucial roadblock that denied NBA players the freedom to dictate what team they played for. Due to the power that the reserve clause gave

NBA owners, they were exceedingly protective of it. Over time, as players started to question both the validity and the legality of the reserve clause, NBA owners became more and more insistent that it was a necessary part of the way the league was structured. It was, fundamentally, an obvious form of exploitation but the reserve clause was so ingrained within the fabric of

American sports that it was hard for the players to convince anyone that it needed to be done away with. Former ABA and NBA star once raised an important about the need for free agency by noting: “If a banker shifts to another bank because it offers him a better

6 position and more security everyone says he’s thinking of his family. Why then can’t a basketball player go to another league whatever the reason without being called selfish, greedy, and traitorous?”7 The battle for free agency was a long one and it took multiple coordinated efforts from NBA players to make even minimal amounts of progress during the early years of the

NBA.

Although the players fought to eradicate the reserve clause as a collective unit, there was one player who made a greater impact throughout the conflict than any other player in the NBA.

Oscar Robertson, often referred to as The Big O, was the undisputed leader of the player’s campaign for free agency. By the time he had taken over as president of the players’ union in

1965, it had already become clear that he was the perfect man for the job. Robertson possessed several traits that made him an ideal leader for the players’ union as they sought to dispute the reserve clause and gain the ability to negotiate freely with other teams. As a Black man in

America, he had experienced injustices everywhere he had been. He had a fierce toughness about him and was unafraid of challenging anyone who he felt was treating him unfairly. He had a natural inclination towards distrusting the NBA owners. He was an absolute star who had dominated the game from the minute he entered the league. And perhaps most importantly,

Robertson truly did believe in what he was fighting for. Years after he led the fight for free agency and ultimately won a crucial settlement in his lawsuit against the NBA, Robertson stated that it was simply “something that had to happen because things were not right in the NBA.”8 To understand why Robertson was such an optimal candidate to lead the players in their struggle for free agency, one has to understand the roots of Robertson’s character, and the experiences he

7 , Hard Labor : The Battle That Birthed the Billion-Dollar NBA (: Triumph Books, 2017), 163. 8 Area 21: Oscar Robertson on How He Changed the NBA, December 17, 2017, Interview by , 00:48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT2eABSYfHM&t=279s

7 went through during his high school and college years that helped shape his comprehension of how to fight back against oppressive treatment.

Part One: Robertson’s Experiences Growing Up

Robertson’s Early Years

Before he became a mercurial superstar and outspoken labor activist, Oscar Robertson was a young Black kid existing in a world that was overwhelmingly dominated by racism and prejudice. Born on November 24th, 1938, in Dickson County, Tennessee, Robertson spent the first few years of his life in the same area that his parents and grandparents had grown up. The

Robertson family’s time in Tennessee was, in many ways, “the typical life of a Negro family in the rural South.”9 There were numerous injustices against non-white people and the state was one of the many places that the Ku Klux Klan called home. Despite the poor conditions that the

Robertson family dealt with in Tennessee, during his early childhood Robertson felt that it wasn’t outlandish to envision him and his relatives residing in Dickson County for generations on end.

That reality never materialized though, due in large part to critical changes within the farming sector that occurred in the 1930s. During this time period there was a definitive shift towards mechanization which drove many sharecroppers and farmers to seek other forms of employment elsewhere. Oscar’s father, Bailey, happened to be one of those farmers whose livelihood was directly affected by the invention of the tractor, along with other new farming technology. From

1935 to 1937, “farm machinery manufacturers sold for use in the 565,792

9 Oscar Robertson, The Big O: My Life, My Times, My Game (United States: Rodale Books, 2003), 5.

8 tractors,” rendering Bailey Robertson and other farmer’s labor obsolete and forcing many of them to find new jobs.10

The Pearl Harbor bombing in December of 1941 set off a call to arms that meant any able-bodied white American man found himself drafted into World War II. In June of 1941,

President Franklin Roosevelt had issued Executive Order 8802, which stated: “There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.”11 This decree, coupled with the increased need for laborers who could manufacture military equipment, had the effect of helping Black Americans get hired to build the machinery required for the ongoing war. With thousands of white Americans leaving the country to fight overseas, there were suddenly plenty of new employment opportunities for

Black Americans. Bailey Robertson’s aunt eventually convinced him to venture to and seek work in one of the many manufacturing plants that existed at the time. At first, Bailey made the journey on his own but by 1942 Oscar and the rest of his family had decided to join Bailey in

Indiana.

Crispus Attucks and The Klan

In a geographical sense Indiana offered a new environment for the Robertson family but just because it was over 400 miles north of Tennessee did not mean that racism was not alive and well in The Hoosier State. Throughout the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan had a significant presence within Indiana’s political hierarchy and it is estimated that by 1925, “the Indiana Klan numbered close to 300,000 male and female members.”12 Furthermore, Indiana’s Klan members, “came

10 C. Horace Hamilton, “Social Effects of Mechanization of Agriculture,” Rural Sociology 4, no. 1 (1939): 3, http://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=chla5075626_4290_001#page/5/mode/1up 11 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 8802, “Prohibition of Discrimination In the Defense Industry,” Code of Federal Regulations, Title 3 (1941 comp.) 12 Leonard J. Moore, Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928 (United Kingdom: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 47.

9 from every stratum of society—farmers, factory workers, businessmen, professionals, and ministers—and the organization was strong in both urban and rural areas in all parts of the state.”13 When Robertson and his family arrived in 1942, it had barely been a decade since the lynchings of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, a pair of young African-Americans who were accused of sexual assault, dragged from their jail cells by a vicious mob, and subsequently beaten to death before being hung in front of a large crowd of white Indianians. Robertson was aware of the racism that pervaded his new hometown but he had not yet comprehended the effect it had on him. He also had not formulated a full understanding of the poverty that his family was entrenched in. He had witnessed the indicators of impoverished living conditions but in his mind he and family “were happy in [their] new home.”14 The area of Indiana that the Robertsons had settled down in was known as Naptown, a place that Robertson describes as a “basic Black ghetto.”1516 Robertson’s parents worked hard to make sure he and his siblings were taken care of and Robertson credits his mother and father with making sure that, “No matter what [they] did or didn’t have to eat, [they] never made us feel like we were poor.”17 Still, though Robertson may not have constantly felt like he was living in poverty, the reality is that he was. In this sense,

Robertson’s material conditions were not much better than they had been in Tennessee.

Crispus Attucks High School played an incredibly important role in ’s

African-American community well before Oscar arrived on campus. The school came to exist after an initial campaign for its creation was led by members of the Chamber of Commerce along with “representatives of women’s clubs and civic groups and the principal of Shortridge High

13 Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 48. 14 Robertson, The Big O, 8. 15 Robertson, The Big O, 8. 16 Robertson’s description of Naptown in his autobiography makes it sound like it was a smaller town that existed within Indianapolis but nowadays, Naptown is a moniker for the city of Indianapolis in its entirety. 17 Robertson, The Big O, 8.

10 School and other well-known whites.”18 These groups advocated for the establishment of a high school that would be specifically for African-American students, with one of the main arguments being that “the prevalence of tuberculosis among Negroes was a menace to white pupils and a reason for separate schools.”19 This idea for a segregated high school was put forth “before 1925, when the Klan-backed school board was elected.”20 Although it was not a publicly Klan-backed school board that initially signed off on the creation of an all-Black high school, “undoubtedly

Klan views were represented in the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce and other civic groups which worked for the separation of the races in the schools.”21 In 1927, two years after the

Klan-backed school board had been elected, Crispus Attucks High School opened its doors.

Before Crispus Attucks was created, “approximately 800 Black students were enrolled at three Indianapolis high schools: Shortridge, Emmerich Manual, and Arsenal Technical.”22 These schools fell into the category of what W.E.B DuBois was describing when he articulated how

“there are many public school systems in the North where Negroes are admitted and tolerated but they are not educated; they are crucified.”23 Black students at these three schools were not given the same quality of education as their white classmates. However, after Crispus Attucks was created it became a popular destination for African-American students throughout the surrounding area and it grew into something of a safe haven for Black children in Indianapolis.

Although the school was supposed to be a manifestation of the “separate but equal” axiom, “in reality the facilities at Attucks were well below the standard enjoyed by students at the white

18 Thornbrough, Indiana Black, 56-57. 19 Thornbrough, Indiana Black, 56. 20 Emma Lou Thornbrough, "Segregation in Indiana during the Klan Era of the 1920's." The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, no. 4 (1961): 617, doi:10.2307/1889600. 21 Thornbrough, "Segregation in Indiana," 617. 22 Lissa May, "Indiana Avenue and Crispus Attucks High School." In David Baker: A Legacy in Music, by Herzig Monika, Davis Nathan, Dyas JB, Hasse John Edward, Jenkins Willard, Wallarab Brent, Ward-Steinman David, and Jones Quincy, 3. Indiana University Press, 2011, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzdr2.6. 23 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois. "Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?" The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (1935): 329, doi:10.2307/2291871.

11 high schools in the city; teachers and staff maintained a high standard of education in spite of, and not thanks to, the resources they were allotted.”24 The call for a segregated high school was born out of pure racism and a desire to separate white children from their Black peers but,

“Ironically...Crispus Attucks High School provided unprecedented opportunities for African

American students and became a beacon of excellence and source of great pride.”25 In 1953

Oscar enrolled in Crispus Attucks, where he would go on to put together one of the most storied high school basketball careers in Indiana history.

While Crispus Attucks High School as a whole was considered to be a place of pride and stewardship for Indianappolis’s African-American community, the Crispus Attucks basketball team was more celebrated than any other group or entity associated with the school. The team was so popular and garnered so much fanfare on a local level that “perhaps no greater, more visible, or more dramatic cultural weapon existed for fighting racial inequality in the hearts and minds of Indianapolis citizens.”26 By the time Robertson was a sophomore he had established himself as a factor on the varsity squad, capable of making a profound impact on both ends of the court. Crispus Attucks’ head coach deserves some credit for being creative with how he utilized Robertson’s skill set but Robertson’s ideal role on the court only became apparent to Crowe after a series of injuries decimated the Tigers’ starting lineup. As a sophomore, Robertson had initially been placed in an interior role where he was tasked with relying solely on his athleticism. After Winford O’Neal, Sheddrick Mitchell, and Willie

Merriweather all sustained injuries that put them out for extended periods of time, Crowe allowed Robertson to play on the perimeter and have the ball in his hands more often. This gave

24 IHB. Rep. Crispus Attucks High School. Indiana Historical Bureau, 3. https://www.in.gov/history/files/49.1992.1review.pdf. 25 May, "Indiana Avenue and Crispus Attucks High School.” 3. 26 Goudsouzian, Aram. ""Ba-ad, Ba-a-ad Tigers": Crispus Attucks Basketball and Black Indianapolis in the 1950s." Indiana Magazine of History 96, no. 1 (2000): 7, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27792219.

12 Robertson a chance to use his impressive feel for the game in conjunction with his physical gifts and it resulted in a constant supply of advantageous situations on offense for Crispus Attucks.

The changing of Roberton’s role was done “out of a combination of convenience and necessity, insight and desperation.”27 Robertson became a force for Crispus Attucks as they made their way to the state semifinal before losing to Milan High School.28 Despite the loss, Robertson had made it clear that he and the rest of the Crispus Attucks team were talented enough to win a state championship, something that had never been done by an all-Black school.

It is impossible to discuss the Crispus Attucks basketball team without discussing the racism that constantly followed them. While Crowe’s installation of a new system that prioritized athleticism and dynamic play in favor of the rigid traditionalist approach that other Indiana high school teams relied on was well received by many Black fans and some white fans, the underlying racism that existed throughout the state of Indiana was incontrovertibly present whenever the Tigers took the floor. Racist comments from crowd members were common.

Crowe shunned the idea that a team made up of Black players could only achieve success and command respect if those players carried themselves in a tranquil and unassuming manner. In his mind, winning games also had to be part of the equation. Crowe felt that his players were representing Indianapolis’s African American community which meant that they needed to appear as well-mannered and worthy of respect as possible. To Crowe, “If the Attucks players won and acted politely, they would be living symbols of why Blacks deserved civil rights.”29 It was hardly a fair position for a group of teenagers to be in but the excitement and attention that surrounded the Crispus Attucks team meant that the players would have a spotlight on them at all

27 Robertson, The Big O, 36. 28 Milan’s improbable state championship run in 1954 became the basis for the movie “Hoosiers”. 29 James A. Fuller, Indiana's 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State. (United States: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2016), 56

13 times. Crowe wanted to win but he also wanted his players to carry themselves in a manner that would leave no room for white people to attack their character with thinly-veiled racist commentary disguised as analysis of a player’s on-court play. His goal was for his players to

“absorb all the name-calling, chanting and prejudiced officiating and look the other way.”30

Robertson was well versed when it came to tuning out racial epithets and taunts but the biased officiating presented a uniquely difficult challenge because it had a blatant effect on the outcome of a game. Crowe was keenly aware that his team would constantly be going up against racist referees, to the point where he would tell his players: “Get a big lead and keep it. Then the referees and crowds won’t have anything to do with it.”31 Crowe’s strategy would prove to be successful during Robertson’s junior season.

Robertson’s High School Stardom

After the 1954 season that saw Crispus Attucks reach the state semifinals, Crowe made it clear that the Tigers would “have to be even better to handle the toughest schedule in Attucks’ history,” if they were going to win a state championship.32 After leading the team in scoring as a sophomore, Robertson made another leap as a junior and consistently led the Tigers to victories with his scoring and playmaking ability. Robertson’s dynamism and his ability to affect the game in a variety of ways, coupled with an Attucks defense that was described by one reporter as

“perhaps the best in five years for Crowe’s teams,” pushed the Tigers to new heights.33 They entered the state tournament with a 21-1 record and had garnered all sorts of praises from various

30 Wayne Drehs, “The Forgotten Hoosiers,” ESPN, February 26, 2009, https://www.espn.com.sg/espn/otl/news/story?id=3936787 31 Robertson, The Big O, 33. 32 Bob Williams, “Attucks Appears Powerful Again,” Indianapolis, n.d. https://ulib.iupuidigital.org/digital/collection/CAttucks/id/6598. 33 Bob Williams, “Hot Attucks Downs Broad Ripple,” Indianapolis, n.d. https://ulib.iupuidigital.org/digital/collection/CAttucks/id/6603.

14 newspapers and media outlets. Robertson had ascended to a new level and was widely regarded as one of the most impressive players in the entire state. After a victory against New Albany

High School, Robertson and his teammates found themselves in the state championship game where, in a bit of an ironic twist, they would be taking on another all-Black team in Gary

Roosevelt High School. To some degree, the Tigers had already made history just by attaining the level of popularity that they had by the time they made it to the state championship. There was no denying that residents all throughout the state of Indiana recognized the impact of the team’s success. Local newspapers such as the Indianapolis Recorder and the Indianapolis Star received a constant stream of comments from readers who were displeased with the positive coverage that Crispus Attucks was receiving, an indication that it wasn’t just African Americans who were tuned in to the success of the team, but rather that, “African Americans and whites alike recognized the cultural implications of a Black team’s success.”34 But while African

American members of the Indianapolis community took pride in what the team had accomplished both on the hardwood and from a racial perspective, most white Indianians were either plainly disgusted by an all-Black team besting its predominantly white opponents, or they were solely infatuated with the on-court victories that the team had recorded, and were happy to ignore any off-court progress that may have been made with regards to eradicating racism.

Mayor Clark’s Decision

On March 19th, 1959, Crispus Attucks won the state championship, beating Gary

Roosevelt High School with the help of a 30 point performance from Oscar Robertson. It was the first time in U.S history that an all-Black high school basketball team had won a state championship and it was a storybook ending to one of the most impressive seasons any Indiana

34 Goudsouzian, ""Ba-ad, Ba-a-ad Tigers,” 32

15 high school basketball team had ever put together. However, the subsequent celebration of the

Tigers’ title shined an even brighter light on the racism that Robertson and his teammates continuously had to deal with. As was the case throughout the entire 1954-55 season the reception from white fans after the championship was a mixed bag. Harold Stolkin, a white man who had previously befriended Ray Crowe, stated that after Attucks won the state championship,

“The [players] were aware of an undercurrent of resentment that a Black team had done what they did.” Stolkin also said that he didn’t think “all whites were against Attucks” and that, “A majority of white people around here really admired them.”35 While winning the state championship had a gradual positive effect on race relations in Indianapolis, Robertson and his teammates were on the receiving end of racist treatment from Indianapolis mayor Alex Clark on the very same night that they had secured their spot in history. The team’s celebration was stained by Mayor Clark’s decision to bar Robertson and his teammates from travelling along the parade path that was traditionally followed by whichever team had won the state championship that year. The Crispus Attucks players were not allowed to have the same celebration that any of the previous state champions had been afforded, due to Mayor Clark’s concerns about “the possibility of rioting” and his belief that “it was too much of a threat to allow [the players] to congregate around Monument Circle.”36 This was a concern that had never been raised for any of the previous state champions, all of whom were white. For Robertson, it was an unforgivable act.

It resulted in him reaching the disheartening but accurate conclusion that in deciding to prevent the Crispus Attucks players from celebrating the same way that every other state champion had celebrated, Mayor Clark and the rest of the city leaders were effectively saying: “They don’t

35 Evan, West. “Remember The Tigers,” Indianapolis Monthly, March 24, 2014. https://www.indianapolismonthly.com/arts-and-culture/sports/remember-the-tigers. 36 Robertson, The Big O, 53.

16 want us.”37 Robertson had witnessed many forms of racism throughout his life leading up to the state championship but, as he later pointed out: “The funny thing about racism is when you’re young and growing up and you go to an all-Black school and have friends all around you, you don’t think about race.”38 Mayor Clark’s refusal to allow the Crispus Attucks players to celebrate in the same manner that their white counterparts had, was racist at its core. But it was also the first time that Robertson had been overtly shown that achieving both personal and communal success would not be enough to free himself and his Black peers from racism. The Tigers winning the state championship gave way to some modicum of progress as it relates to race relations between Blacks and whites in Indianapolis but overarching racist beliefs that had long dictated the city’s societal norms did not disappear. This was an essential moment for Robertson and it heightened his understanding of the ubiquitous nature of racism. In some ways it could even be considered the genesis of his eventual fight against racial injustices and labor issues in professional basketball.

Part Two: Robertson’s College Days

Branch McCracken’s Insult

After making history by becoming the first all-Black high school team to win a state championship, Crispus Attucks backed up their unprecedented 1955 season by putting together an even more impressive campaign in 1956. The Tigers went undefeated and took home a second straight state title, beating every opponent in their path without much trouble. Robertson had put the finishing touches on an illustrious high school career that saw him win his final 45 games over the course of his junior and senior years. In today’s environment, he would have been billed

37 Robertson, The Big O, 54. 38 Robertson, The Big O, 54.

17 as a 5-star recruit and coaches from High-Major schools all across the country would have been leaping at the chance to get him on campus but in 1956, the recruitment of Black high school players was much different than it is now. Robertson was excited with the prospect of playing for the University of Indiana, a logical goal given the school’s proximity to his hometown and the

Hoosier’s tradition of success. However, he was forced to make alternative plans after Indiana head coach Branch McCracken blatantly disrespected him during Oscar’s visit to Bloomington.

McCracken had already achieved extreme notoriety in Indiana after leading the Hoosiers to an NCAA title in 1940. His place in Hoosier lore was firmly established well before

Robertson even entered the picture. What was also firmly established was that McCracken was a virulent racist who openly and explicitly refused to recruit Black players regardless of their talent level. Nearly a decade before Robertson was going through the recruiting process, a Black high school player named Johnny Wilson had a similar goal of playing at Indiana. Wilson, who attended Anderson High School (which was integrated), might not have been quite as talented as

Robertson, but he was named Mr. Basketball in the state of Indiana, a title that would have been hard to attain without a requisite level of ability.39 By all accounts, Wilson would have certainly met the threshold for a Big Ten player in the 1940s but McCracken refused to admit that Wilson was good enough to play at Indiana. He publicly humiliated Wilson when, while in the same room as Wilson, he “told a questioner at an Anderson victory banquet that Wilson was not a good enough player to make his team.”40 It should be noted that while McCracken’s refusal to recruit African-American players was contemptible, he was certainly not alone in his desire to

39 Without the same detailed analysis that contemporary scouting services provide on players in the 21st century, it is difficult to get a true sense of how good Wilson was in comparison to Robertson. However, given Robertson’s role as the best player on a team that went 45-1 during his junior and senior seasons, and the manner in which fans, newswriters, and coaches talked about his dominance, it is fair to assume that Robertson had a strong case for being more talented than Wilson. 40 Rachel Cody, “Fair Play That Changed the Face of the NCAA,” Indianapolis Monthly, November 12, 2012, https://www.indianapolismonthly.com/arts-and-culture/sports/fair-play-that-changed-the-face-of-the-ncaa

18 have anything other than a roster made up entirely of white players. It was widely known that the

Big Ten coaches had a “gentleman’s agreement”, stipulating that they would not recruit Black players. This arrangement was contingent on all the coaches continuously refusing to allow

Black players on their rosters. In other words, “As long as the Big Ten’s gentleman’s agreement held, others could hide behind it, and if it fell, others would be next in line.”41 McCracken certainly held his own views about Black players but he was even more inclined to not accept them on his team because he knew that the other Big Ten coaches would not be pleased if he were to break the gentleman’s agreement.

In 1947, one year after Wilson had been denied a spot on the Hoosier’s roster, another star Black player named Bill Garrett expressed his desire to play for Indiana. When it became apparent that McCracken was again prepared to intentionally avoid taking on a talented player simply because of the color of his skin, his racism began to get called out, albeit somewhat crudely, by members of the Indianapolis media. Hammond Times sports editor John Whittaker put forth an open letter to Big Ten commissioner K.L “Tug” Wilson, in which he asked: “If the biggest, braggingest athletic conference in the middle of the greatest country in the world can use

Negroes like Buddy Young, Ike Owen, Ward, Duke Slater, George Taliaferro and the like to draw $200,000 crowds for football...and Negroes like and Eddie Tolan to win

Olympic crowns—why can’t it use them in basketball.”42 Indianapolis Recorder reporter Charles

S. Preston was equally appalled and dismayed at the thought of McCracken not giving Garrett a spot on the team, and he penned an article in which he wondered: “What in Hades is the matter with the Hoosier State, when we are going to let one of our best basketball players of all time get away from us and go out to California to play! And all because of a ridiculous ‘unwritten law’

41 Tom Graham and Rachel Graham Cody, Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of (United States: Indiana University Press, 2006), xii. 42 Graham and Cody, Getting Open, 87.

19 that doesn’t begin to make sense!”43 It took the persuasion of Indiana’s president, Herman B.

Wells, to get McCracken to finally relent and allocate a place on the team for Garrett. With the help and support of various Indianapolis community leaders like Faburn DeFrantz, the Executive

Director of the Senate Avenue YMCA in Indianapolis, Wells was able to convince McCracken to give Garrett a roster spot by promising McCracken that “he would handle any potential backlash from other Big Ten coaches.”44 DeFrantz inserting himself into the equation was an important, calculated maneuver on his part. He had established himself as an integral member of the

African-American community in Indianapolis and he helped build up Senate Avenue into a place that “became known nationally for the Sunday afternoon meetings in which dignitaries, politicians, and scholars—local, regional, and national—took to the stage to inform interested and large audiences of the issues of the day.”45 After trying and failing to convince Indiana to take Johnny Wilson in 1946, DeFrantz made the trek to Bloomington in 1947, where he would deftly harness his political clout with a “delegation that indicated to Wells that should he be forestalled again legal action would ensue.”46 It was a shrewd decision by DeFrantz and it showed Wells that DeFrantz was dead set on ensuring that Garrett would be allowed to play for the Hoosiers. Garrett ended up enrolling at Indiana and in 1948 he became the first Black player to participate in a varsity contest. However, as Robertson would later find out, Garrett’s presence on the Hoosiers’ roster did not instantaneously rid McCracken of his racist ways.

43 Charles Preston, “‘Mr. Basketball’ May Spend College Days on West Coast,” Indianapolis Recorder, June 7, 1947, https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INR19470607-01.1.11&srpos=1&e=------194-en-20-INR-1--txt-txIN-mr. +basketball+may+spend----1947-- 44 Casey Pfeiffer, “Bill Garrett and the Integration of Big Ten Basketball, Part 1”, Indiana Historical Bureau of the Indiana State Library, March 15, 2016, https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/gentlemans-agreement/ 45 Richard Pierce, “Little Progress ‘Happens’”: Faburn E. DeFrantz and the Indianapolis Senate Avenue YMCA.” Indiana Magazine of History 108, no. 2 (2012): 101, doi:10.5378/indimagahist.108.2.0098. 46 Pierce. “Little Progress ‘Happens,’” 103.

20 In 1955, another Black high school star, , was deciding which school he wanted to attend. Chamberlain initially whittled down his list of preferred destinations to

Dayton, Michigan, Indiana and Kansas. Michigan fell out of the picture due to its status as a football-crazed institution that did not show the same type of support for the school’s basketball team. Dayton was also removed from consideration after Chamberlain was frustrated that he was only fed room service throughout his recruiting trip, a sign that “his courtiers were hiding him from the city’s segregated restaurants.”47After a monumental recruiting effort by Kansas head coach , which included Chamberlain receiving “more than five hundred letters from alumni and school officials imploring him to attend the ,” the Overbrook

High School superstar announced his intentions to go to Lawrence and play for the Jayhawks.48

This rubbed McCracken the wrong way and he immediately “claimed that an agent had demanded fifty-two hundred dollars plus room, board, and tuition for a player, later revealed to be Chamberlain.”49 Given that “Chamberlain later claimed that the IU boosters had offered to double whatever KU ponied up,” this was a less-than-subtle attempt by McCracken to smear

Chamberlain and Allen, rather than a legitimate gripe about the ethics of Kansas’s recruitment of

Chamberlain.50 McCracken still carried a grudge two years later when it was Robertson’s turn to go through the recruiting process. Robertson, accompanied by Ray Crowe, visited Indiana’s campus where they were supposed to meet with McCracken. The Indiana coach kept Robertson and Crowe waiting for 30 minutes and then opened up the conversation by telling Robertson, “I

47 Aram Goudsouzian, “Can Basketball Survive Chamberlain? The Kansas Years of Wilt the Stilt.” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 28 (Autumn 2005): 154, https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2005autumn_goudsouzian.pdf 48 Goudsouzian, “Can Basketball Survive Chamberlain?,” 153. 49 Goudsouzian, “Can Basketball Survive Chamberlain?,” 154. 50 Luke Winn, “The Freshman: From Wilt...To Manning...To Wiggins,” , October 14, 2013, https://vault.si.com/vault/2013/10/14/the-freshman

21 hope you’re not the kind of kid who wants money to go to school.”51 Robertson was offended and he promptly told Crowe he wanted to exit the meeting. He would later say that he thought

McCracken was “insinuating that [he] was going to demand money to go to IU, which was really an insult to me.”52 Robertson left McCracken’s office, his desire to play for the Hoosiers having ceased to exist after “McCracken’s racial attitudes intervened.”53

Robertson’s NCAA Tenure

The day after he graduated high school, Robertson committed to the University of

Cincinnati. Robertson had been to Cincinnati more than once to see Jackie Robinson and the

Dodgers take on the . When he attended Reds games, Robertson saw sections of

Black fans at the ballpark and became encouraged by what he perceived to be a strong

African-American community in Cincinnati. He would later find out that there were much fewer

Black students on campus at the university than he had anticipated. Robertson quickly realized that there were only four other Black students enrolled at the university. He approached head coach George Smith, telling him that there were fewer Black students than he thought there would be. Smith responded by saying that he was aware of that fact but if he had admitted it to

Robertson beforehand he would have likely lost any shot of getting him to commit to playing for

Cincinnati.54 Frankly, Robertson would have found it difficult to find a non-HBCU school that had more than a handful of Black players on its basketball roster. This was still seven years before Texas Western College coach assembled an all-Black starting five that won a national championship, which helped “to break the barrier to integration of basketball in the

51 Michael Lenehan, Ramblers: Loyola Chicago 1963—The Team That Changed The Color of College Basketball (United States: Agate Publishing, 2013), ch. 3. 52 Michael Perry and Nick Lachey, Tales From Basketball (United States: Sports Pub., 2004), 4. 53 Oscar Robertson, “When the Big O First Played the Garden: 56 in ’58,” New York Times, March 9, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/sports/basketball/09robertson.html 54 Perry and Lachey, Tales From Cincinnati Bearcats Basketball, 5.

22 South and indeed to promote a larger role for Black athletes in basketball programs across .”55 It was a questionable tactic on Smith’s part but it worked; Robertson stayed at

Cincinnati and spent three years putting up absolutely ludicrous numbers for the Bearcats. In 88 career games he averaged 33.8 points and 15.2 rebounds per game, while shooting 53.5% from the field on more than 22 attempts per game. His list of accomplishments was equally mind-boggling. He led Cincinnati to back to back Final Fours in 1959 and 1960, was the leading scorer in Division 1 basketball for all three years, was honored as a First-Team All-American all three years, and was named National College Player of the Year three years in a row. His stardom in college was so extraordinary that, “in 1998, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association renamed its men’s College the .”56 More than 60 years after he utterly dominated college basketball, there is still a compelling argument to be made that

Robertson is the best collegiate basketball player of all time.

In more ways than one, Robertson’s tenure with the Bearcats was reminiscent of his time at Crispus Attucks. Overwhelmingly superior athleticism, natural ability, and incredible instincts allowed him to assert his will any time he was on the court. But off the court, the same racism that was present during his time in Naptown still permeated his day to day experiences while he was in college. In 1958 Cincinnati travelled to Texas to take on the University of Houston. The team stayed in the Shamrock Hilton Hotel but as the only Black member of the squad, Oscar was forced to lodge separately from his teammates, in a dorm room at Texas Southern University.

Another instance of racism came a year later when the Bearcats were preparing to play in the annual Dixie Classic tournament in North Carolina. The Raleigh chapter of the Ku Klux Klan

55 Harvey Jackson, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 16: Sports and Recreation. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 35. 56 Michael O’Daniel, “Oscar Robertson: National Association of Basketball Coaches’ “Player of the Century,” Black Sports The Magazine, February 2012, 36. https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/70d946e8/files/uploaded/BSTMFeb2012x.pdf

23 (which of course was not an unknown entity to Robertson) had gotten word that Robertson would be in town. Robertson would later say: “Before I went down there, I got a telegram from the Ku Klux Klan that said I was going to be shot if he came down to play.”57 This was a continuation of what Robertson had dealt with in high school except this time he did not even have the shared identity that he had with his Crispus Attucks teammates. He quite literally had to suffer alone, and he has stated that he “contemplated quitting basketball, not just because of the insults but also because he felt he didn’t get adequate support from his Cincinnati teammates and coach George Smith.”58 Furthermore, at Crispus Attucks there was at least some sort of notion, however vague or naive, that the Tigers winning at a high level could be something of an antidote for the racism that existed in Indianapolis. This theoretical domino effect did not exist at

Cincinnati as there were far more fans throughout the country who would have been happy to see

Robertson fail. The Crispus Attucks team was able to make an impact with regards to race relations in Indianapolis because of their remarkable success as an all-Black team with a Black coach, two components that Robertson’s Bearcats squad was missing.

The Territorial Draft

After his senior season at Cincinnati, Robertson formally declared for the NBA draft. The modern day ‘one-and-done’ path did not exist during the 1960s but if it had been a more common strategy at the time, it would not have been surprising to see Robertson spend significantly less time than he did at Cincinnati.59 Freshmen did not play on the varsity team so

57 Kenneth Shouler, “The Big O,” Cigar Aficionado, March/April 2005, https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/the-big-o-6186 58 Jack McCallum, “The Big O: The NBA’s Forgotten Trailblazer,” Sports Illustrated, December 22, 2020, https://www.si.com/nba/2020/12/22/oscar-robertson-nba-trailblazer-daily-cover 59 The ‘one-and-done’ path refers to a college freshman who spends only one year at school before leaving to turn pro. It has become an increasingly popular option for many top prospects ever since the NBA installed a rule banning high schoolers from entering the draft straight out of high school.

24 Robertson technically could not have been a true “one-and-done” player who only spent a single year on campus. But after a sophomore year that saw him average a stupefying 35.1 points and

15.2 rebounds per game, it was not as if he needed to put in a massive amount of work on his game for NBA teams to consider him a prospect worthy of their attention. By all accounts,

Robertson’s skill set was so well-rounded that it was difficult to pinpoint any genuine weaknesses he had on either end of the floor. Perhaps the best summation of Robertson’s college career came when he was a sophomore and the Bearcats took on Seton Hall at Madison Square

Garden. Robertson finished with a cool 56 points which was “more than the entire Seton Hall team, and more than any player, pro or college, had ever scored in the world’s most famous arena.”60 Oscar’s greatness—which was well-known in Indiana—had been showcased on a national stage. By the time he declared for the draft two years later, everyone throughout the sport knew who he was and what he was capable of.

Robertson’s first experience with labor injustice in the NBA actually came before he even played his first professional game. It was after Robertson’s sophomore year of college that he became a victim of what was called the territorial draft. It worked exactly as you might assume it would: an NBA franchise could select a player who played his college ball within a 50 mile radius of the franchise. In fact, an NBA franchise could reserve the rights to a player who was still a college underclassman and wait to formally sign them until they had graduated. The team would lose a first round pick if they chose to utilize their territorial pick but the tradeoff was that they would be able to sign a player with a territorial pick before the real draft actually began.

This, in effect, granted a team the de facto number one pick if there happened to be a player in their area who was talented enough to warrant sacrificing a draft pick. It also had the effect of limiting where a player could sign since there were no NBA franchises within 50 miles of each

60 Lenehan, Ramblers. ch. 3

25 other that could have potentially wanted to use a territorial pick on the same player. The purpose of this mechanism was “to take advantage of the regional popularity of college stars.”61 A more cynical summary of the territorial draft would describe it purely as a way for the NBA to ensure that the best players were going to the franchises where the league thought they would bring in the most revenue. This was an issue of player autonomy in and of itself (not unlike the current draft structure where players still have hardly any say in which franchise they end up playing for) but it was actually even more exploitative due to the nature of the reserve clause which gave franchises the irrevocable right to retain their players when their contracts were up. This meant that if a player were to be taken in the territorial draft, he would be stuck there for the remainder of his career. In Oscar Robertson’s case, it meant that he would play for the Cincinnati Royals whether he wanted to or not.

When Robertson declared for the 1960 draft he immediately became the most highly regarded player in the entire pool of prospects. He had established a remarkable track record of winning during both his high school and college careers. He checked off numerous boxes in terms of skill, athleticism, mentality, and feel for the game. Although it is a bit difficult to control for the differences in how the game is played now, it is not unthinkable to suggest that there would have been an immense amount of hype surrounding Robertson if he had been entering the

NBA during the social media era. But this was 1960 and the league had only eight franchises, no

TV deal, and a dwindling amount of fan support. Many arenas around the league did not have the capacity to hold large numbers of fans but it was not as if games were selling out on a regular basis anyway. The Royals were in a particularly dismal spot financially and desperately needed

Robertson’s starpower to help increase game attendance and ticket sales. The franchise was

61 Percy Allen, “How the NBA Draft Became A Lottery,” Seattle Times, May 21, 2007, https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/how-the-nba-draft-became-a-lottery/

26 woefully devoid of any meaningful talent besides Jack Twyman and and the team had no clear avenues towards success (aside from the exploitative territorial draft). Robertson represented hope for a franchise that in 1959 had finished dead last and “more than seventy-five thousand dollars in the red.”62 Unfortunately for Robertson, he had no say in the matter and as long as he wanted to play in the NBA he would have to do so for the Royals. It was the equivalent of a Julliard grad being told they could only perform in dive bars for the rest of their professional career. Nonetheless, Robertson did want to play in the NBA and he decided to negotiate a contract with the Royals before the 1960 season.

Part Three: The NBA’s History of Racism

Abe Saperstein’s Globetrotters

The Globetrotters had been pursuing Robertson well before it was time for him to make a deal with the Royals. This was not out of the ordinary for the time period; the

Globetrotters had always been an option for young, talented Black players dating back to 1927 when Abe Saperstein founded the organization. A native of Chicago, Saperstein had assembled the Globetrotters after he coached a Negro American Legion team from the South Side of

Chicago. The team failed to retain its sponsorship in 1926 but Saperstein decided to rebrand his squad as the , a hat tip to the fact that “Harlem was the hub of Black culture at the time.”63 The team began to travel around the country playing games against various opponents and building a reputation as one of the most entertaining group of barnstormers

62 Robertson, The Big O, 135. 63 Nancy Gondo, “He Combined Competition, Laughter To Wow 'Em; Create Your Market: Playing Up To The Crowd Helped Abe Saperstein Spin His Basketball Barnstormers Into A Harlem Legend,” Investor's Business Daily, (January 2006): 1, https://ezproxy.haverford.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/he-combined-competition-laughter wow-em-create/docview/1033219437/se-2?accountid=11321

27 throughout the nation. Saperstein’s players were naturally talented but they also had a knack for combining their raw ability with flair and audacity in the form of “antics such as dribbling between their legs, doing behind-the-back passes, and rolling the ball down one arm, across the shoulders, to the other arm.”64 The Globetrotters routinely dominated their opponents, to the point that they started to anger white fans who were upset that a team of Black players could so easily take down the home favorites. Saperstein grew increasingly aware of this and he realized that the Globetrotters could strike a balance between “athletic prowess and clowning around,” that would ease the tension from white fans while still allowing the Globetrotters to win. This became the Globetrotters formula; they would put on a show and dazzle crowds with their shenanigans but they would still prove that they were legitimately the better basketball team by the time the final buzzer sounded. The team’s popularity grew and they began to showcase their talents against better competition. By 1950 they had “defeated the national champion

Minneapolis Lakers, and [the] players had proved themselves against the best on the world stage.”65 It had become obvious that Black players belonged in the NBA and it was clear that it was not their talent preventing them from holding down roster spots across the league.

After the Globetrotters defeated the Lakers in 1950, three Black players landed NBA contracts, making them the first group of Black players to enter the NBA. Earl Loyd was drafted by the Washington Capitols, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton was picked up by the , and Chuck Cooper was signed by the Celtics. When his selection of Cooper was challenged by other owners, Celtics owner Walter Brown infamously said, “I don't care if he's striped, plaid, or polka dot!”66 The question of whether or not the NBA actually had a formal rule

64 Gondo, “He Combined Competition,” 2. 65 R. Baxter Miller, “Traces of Sport from the Harlem Renaissance: The Embedded Narrative,” CLA Journal 59, no. 2 (December 2015): 134-35, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44325568 66 Marc J. Spears, “In Terms of History, These Men Get The Picture,” Boston Globe, February 21, 2008, http://archive.boston.com/sports/articles/2008/02/21/in_terms_of_history_these_men_get_picture/

28 banning Black players before 1950 is a misguided one, given that no team even tried to sign any

Black players until 1949 when New York Knicks owner made it known that he wanted to sign Clifton away from the Globetrotters. Similar to the Big Ten’s “gentlemen’s agreement”,

NBA owners collectively choose not to pursue any Black players. Irish should not be painted as some sort of savior whose moral compass simply could not allow for the ban on Black players to continue. His insistence on ensuring that the league would allow Black players had much more to do with roster construction and his team’s need for a talented big man. This was a common theme whenever the NBA made any sort of advancements that had to do with race. It was rarely, if ever, about giving Black players a chance to play purely because they had been denied an opportunity because of the color of their skin. NBA owners cared solely about their profits and by 1950 some of them had realized that signing Black players would give them a chance to improve their bottom lines. Irish’s initial request for the ban to be removed in 1949 was met with disdain from the majority of owners. Annual revenue was meager at the time and the owners

“would continue to bathe in red ink,” if they could not get more tickets sold.67 The worry was that if Black players were allowed to join NBA teams, it would diminish the number of talented players that Saperstein could retain on the Globetrotters. This would not have been much of a concern for the NBA owners if it weren’t for the fact that the Globetrotters frequently played against NBA teams and routinely drew better crowds than contests between two NBA franchises did. NBA owners were “hampered by constraints of stadium capacities in several of the smaller cities and by a lack of interest in the larger cities, such as .”68 The owners got people into arenas by having the Globetrotters put on a show where they would delight fans with their displays of trickery and razzle-dazzle. According to former Syracuse Nationals star Dolph

67 David George Surdham, “Conclusion: The NBA Becomes “Major League”,” In The Rise of the National Basketball Association, (University of Press, 2012), 165, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt3fh694.11. 68 Surdham. “The NBA Becomes “Major League”.” 165.

29 Schayes, “In the first five years of the NBA, the Globetrotters helped carry the league.”69 The owners’ logic was that if they started to poach Saperstein’s players he would stop scheduling

NBA opponents for the Globetrotters and the owners would ultimately lose one of their only reliable forms of enticing fans to attend games. This was the primary reason why Irish’s proposal was shot down.

The outcome of the first vote made Irish even more determined to see the unwritten rule changed. Six months after he was denied another vote was held. At this point Irish was ready to put his entire franchise on the line. He demanded that the league eradicate the unwritten rule banning Black players and he threatened to remove the Knicks from the league if he did not get his way. The rest of the owners were essentially faced with the prospect of either losing gate revenue from the Globetrotters not continuing to do halftime gigs during NBA games, or somehow trying to grow the league without having a franchise in the nation’s media capital. It may have been a bluff on Irish’s part but his aggressiveness got him what he wanted. Once again, the owners made a decision that was based exclusively on potential revenue. Some people throughout the NBA, such as coach and Fort Wayne owner Fred

Zollner, had been in favor of allowing Black players to enter the league as long as they were talented enough. On the surface there might be a bit of an inclination to laud Auerbach, Zollner, and Irish as the progressive purveyors of change who steered the league in the right direction.

The problem is that those men only began to advocate for change when their franchises stood to benefit from it. Would Irish have fought tooth and nail for Black players to be allowed in the league if an alteration to the rules would not have immediately landed him Sweetwater Clifton?

The removal of the ban on signing Black players was an objectively good outcome for the

69 Terry Pluto, Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 64.

30 League and for Black players but the motive for the change was less about the owners wanting to break down racist barriers and more about them wanting to build better rosters that could win more games, draw more fans, and ultimately bring in more revenue.

As more Black players started to trickle into the NBA, Saperstein’s relationship with the league’s owners began to sour. For over 20 years the Globetrotters had been the primary destination for any young talented Black player. As the doors to the NBA swung open,

Saperstein had to fight to get players who now had their sights set on the NBA. In 1959 he was able to sign Wilt Chamberlain because Chamberlain had to wait one year to enter the NBA draft after only finishing three years of school at Kansas. Saperstein gave Chamberlain a one-year contract worth $65,000 dollars, a sum of money that was significantly more than any NBA player earned in 1959. Chamberlain toured with the Globetrotters but both he and Saperstein knew that he would be departing for the NBA in a year. Robertson has said he felt that, after

Chamberlain entered the NBA, “Abe needed a new meal ticket, and I guess he thought I could be it.”70 Robertson might have been more enthusiastic about the idea of joining the Globetrotters if

Saperstein had offered him more than $17,000 dollars. Robertson knew he was talented enough to earn more than that in the NBA and he quickly shot down Saperstein’s offer.

Despite his insistence that had no interest in joining the Globetrotters, the rumors continued to swirl around Robertson, culminating in a Sports Illustrated article that twisted several quotes from him into a story which gave the impression that he was going to follow

Chamberlain’s path and leave college after his junior year. During an interview with Robertson, sportswriter Jeremiah Tax asked Robertson if he was considering dropping out of Cincinnati and signing with the Globetrotters. According to Robertson, he told Tax that he had met with the

70 Robertson, The Big O, 95.

31 Globetrotters but he was not going to play for them.71 Tax published an extensive piece implying that Robertson was eager to sign with the Globetrotters, a claim that was based purely off

“Robertson’s animated face” as he answered questions about the Globetrotters. Tax wrote:

“There is, Robertson apparently feels, no room further up for him in his present situation. There is only a way out.”72 Robertson had to deal with the fallout from the article, which included many local media members becoming upset that he had down for an interview with a reporter from a big national media outlet yet had never given them the same type of access. Given that the local press had not made much of an effort to get to know Robertson, plus the fact that, “half of them showed the same provincial, small-minded racist attitudes that made [Robertson’s] life so difficult in Cincinnati,” it is more than understandable that Robertson was not particularly fond of doling out information about his looming career path to any of them.

The Quota System

After his junior year, Robertson’s mother was diagnosed with a kidney infection and required surgery that forced her into debt. This ordeal was another moment that shaped

Robertson’s understanding of exploitation and how it directly affected him. He has described how frustrated and angered he was that his family was struggling financially, “while people were making money off [his] talent and still treating [him] like their property.”73 His mother’s medical debt was just the next grievance in a long line of injustices that included the racism he experienced as a high school player, the racism on the part of Coach McCracken that prevented

Robertson from becoming a Hoosier, the racism (both explicit and subtle) that he endured during

71 Robertson, The Big O, 105. 72 Jeremiah Tax, “What Price Glory For Oscar,” Sports Illustrated, January 26, 1959, https://vault.si.com/vault/1959/01/26/what-price-glory-for-oscar 73 Robertson, The Big O, 114.

32 his time at Cincinnati, and the exploitative nature of the territorial draft. And that isn’t even including other occurrences in Robertson’s life that had given him an increased understanding of the injustices within professional basketball. Robertson’s older brother Bailey had been a talented basketball player in his own right and although Oscar may have been the more gifted of the two, Bailey was seemingly good enough to play professional basketball. Bailey, who was known to many by his nickname “Flap”, also attended Crispus Attucks and according to Oscar,

“there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Bailey’s talents and those of Attucks’s star Hallie Bryant.”74 Bryant, who was also Black, and Bailey both had a strong desire to go to

Indiana but Coach McCracken made no effort to recruit Bailey, opting instead to go after the physically gifted Bryant.75 Bryant had a solid, but unspectacular career for the Hoosiers while

Flap enrolled at Indiana Central College where he had a tremendous career. After he graduated,

Bailey was selected by the Syracuse Nationals but he ended up becoming a victim of the unofficial quota system that was in place which prevented NBA teams from having more than a handful of Black players on their roster at one time.

Although the owners had voted to allow Black players to play in the NBA, they still were of the opinion that too many Black players would be bad for business. It is a bit astonishing how convoluted the owners’ logic was during this period of time (although perhaps not too convoluted considering that racism and greed were the driving force behind it all). At first they were wary of letting Black players in the league because it could potentially fracture their relationships with Abe Saperstein. Then they decided that Black players were allowed to play in the NBA but too many Black players on one team would be discouraged. There was minimal evidence to support the owners’ theory that a team full of Black players would be bad for

74 Robertson, The Big O, 29. 75 Robertson, The Big O, 29.

33 business but the more ridiculous aspect of the whole process was that business was already bad before Black players were even allowed to join the League. The Globetrotters routinely drawing the biggest crowds should have been an indication that Black players were not bad for business.

The Globetrotter’s popularity should have also been a warning sign to the owners that they needed to shift their product “from a stodgy, rough-hewed game into a more exciting, fluid contest.”76 This shift did not come until Black players started to enter the NBA at higher rates.

After 1950, Black players began to realize that even though they were now allowed to play in the NBA, they were still not on equal footing with white players. Knicks star recounts his friend ’s entrance into the NBA which saw him play two years for the

Syracuse Nationals before he “realized he really was as good as most of the white stars he had read about.” Despite showing that he was just as talented as any white player, Barnett “knew that he was not equally paid.”77 Barnett was far from the only Black player who experienced this continued inequality after the ban on Black players ended. The quota system existed throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s and the entire league was aware of it. Indeed, it would have been difficult to not notice that every NBA team had, at most, three Black players on its roster. Former

NBA player Rodney “Hot Rod” Hundley once noted that a common phrase at the time was: “It’s a white dollar,” in reference to the owners’ belief that they needed to be cautious of angering white fans by bringing in too many Black players.78 According to , a white player who spent three years in the NBA mostly riding the bench, when he asked Philadelphia Warriors owner why he kept him around if he was not going to play real minutes,

Gottlieb’s response was: “Fans won’t buy tickets if you have too many Negroes.”79 Celtics player

76 Surdham, “ NBA Becomes “Major League”,” 167. 77 Bill Bradley, Life on the Run (United States: RosettaBooks, 2014), 30. 78 Pluto, Tall Tales, 75. 79 Jackie MacMullan, Dan Klores, Rafe Bartholomew, Basketball: A Love Story (United States: Crown, 2018)

34 Charles Share has said that a common refrain the players often heard was: “Give me two Black players and I’ll win a title. Three and they’ll take over and there will be trouble.”80 Share’s quote is particularly illuminating because it shows that NBA owners knew they needed Black players on their teams in order to have success, yet at the same time there was still a general wariness of bringing in too many Black players because the owners felt they would end up having too much power. Share was also careful to preface his quote by stating that “most white players didn’t agree with [it].”81 This was important because white players were eventually going to have to join forces with Black players to fight back against the owners’ reliance on the reserve clause.

Though they were not experiencing racism themselves, white players throughout the NBA were aware of what Black players had to deal with, just as Black players were aware of the negative effects the reserve clause had on the careers of white and Black players alike.

Aside from the obvious racism that was the basis for the quota system, the Black players who had been granted access to the league experienced other forms of racism from teammates, opponents, and coaches. Black players were expected to fill specific roles on the court. They were supposed to be ones who would handle the unglamorous dirty work and then get out of the way while their white teammates handled scoring duties. , who was one of the most accomplished Black players of his time, summed up the experience of Black players by saying: “The feeling among the first Black players was that you played defense, you got a , you threw the ball to the guard, and that was the last you saw of it.”82 Barksdale recalls playing in games where there was a single Black player on the opposing team which resulted in what he describes as “a 4-on-4 game with us as the odd men out.”83 Perhaps the most egregious

80 Pluto, Tall Tales, 75. 81 Pluto, Tall Tales, 75. 82 Pluto, Tall Tales, 75. 83 Pluto, Tall Tales, 76.

35 example came in 1961 when St. Louis Hawks rookie Cleo Hill was completely frozen out and ignored on the court by his white teammates. Hawks coach Paul Seymour called a time-out and told his team that he would fine the next player who didn’t pass Hill the ball $500 dollars. His efforts failed and hardly a week later Seymour was fired by Hawks owner after a number of white players on the Hawks came to him grumbling about Seymour’s actions. Though the NBA had no doubt made a significant step in allowing Black players to enter the league, it was not as if the racism that pervaded the sport before 1950 suddenly ceased to exist once Ned

Irish got his wish. When Robertson signed with the Royals in 1960, the racist quota system had started to fade but the remnants of it were still in existence. The number of Black players in the

NBA was increasing but the racism that had allowed the quota system to last for so long had not simply vanished. There were also plenty of other wrongdoings on the part of the owners that affected both Black and white players.

The Stokes Game

Before Robertson entered the league he had met , a Black player who was well on his way to becoming one of the best, most well-rounded stars in the game, Black or

White. Stokes had entered the league in 1955, fairly recently after the 1950 rule change, and he had been producing from the moment he stepped foot on an NBA court. He took the league by storm in his very first game, unloading 32 points and racking up 20 rebounds to go along with eight assists against the New York Knicks. Earlier that same year had already become the first

Black player to be drafted by the Royals, a half decade before the club would officially select

Oscar Robertson.84 Stokes spent three seasons with the Royals and was named an All-Star all

84 This was in 1955 when the franchise was still located in Rochester, New York. It was not until 1957 that the team was relocated to Cincinnati.

36 three years. Perhaps even more impressively, “He broke the NBA’s single-season rebounding record in 1956 and demonstrated that, contrary to certain popular stereotypes, Black athletes could be more than simply “role” players in the league.”85 Stokes was one of the few Black players who was so good he managed to played his way out of the racist pigeonholing that many

NBA coaches carried out on Black players.

In 1958 Stokes sustained a head injury during a game against the Lakers that left him unconscious for roughly three minutes. Incredibly, Stokes actually entered back into the game after a brief hiatus and ended up posting 24 points and 19 rebounds. Three days later,

Stokes had begun to experience an upset stomach and he was noticeably physically weak during the Royals’ loss to the Pistons in game one of their first round playoff series. Of course, it would be fair and accurate to say that the training staff’s decision to allow Stokes to play was questionable at best. The only problem is, NBA owners were so cheap during this time period that they did not send trainers on road trips, which meant that there was no medical professional with the team in Detroit when Stokes looked out of sorts. The failure to send trainers with travelling teams was just one of the many shortcomings with regards to players’ rights in the

1950s and 1960s. A lack of health insurance, crummy lodgings, no pay for preseason games, all to go along with the racism that Black players had to deal with, made for a rather unpleasant existence as an NBA player. Stokes would end up feeling the effects of the league’s distinctly apathetic attitude towards players who were in need of serious medical help.

While in flight on the way back from Detroit Stokes’ condition started to worsen, to the point where a flight attendant had to “administer oxygen through a mask.”86 He was taken to a hospital in Cincinnati where he subsequently fell into a coma that lasted multiple weeks. When

85 Pat Farabaugh, “The Rochester Royals’ Maurice Stokes: Kodak City’s (and the NBA’s) First Black Basketball Star,” Rochester History 76, no. 1 (2014): 1, https://www.libraryweb.org/~rochhist/v76_2014/v76i1.pdf 86 Farabaugh, “The Rochester Royals’ Maurice Stoke,” 20.

37 he woke up, “He was paralyzed from the neck down and could not speak.”87 Stokes had six-figure hospital bills that needed to be taken care of and he did not have the resources to do so.

If it were not for the generosity and hard work of his white teammate Jack Twyman, it is likely that Stokes would have never gotten the medical treatment he needed. Twyman recognized that

Stokes needed someone to care for him, both in a physical sense but also financially. He became

Stokes’ legal guardian and with the help of hotel owner Milton Kutsher, he organized an annual charity game that took place in the Catskill Mountains to help generate funds for Stokes’ medical needs. It was obviously a huge responsibility for Twyman to undertake but he understood what every other player understood. If nobody did anything to help Stokes it was not as if the Royals franchise would step in and make sure their former employee was taken care of. Furthermore, for

Twyman there was an element of solidarity with his former colleague since he knew that every

NBA player, including himself, was not making enough money to be able to afford the bills that

Stokes had to account for.88 Of course the racial component of Twyman’s relationship with

Stokes should not go overlooked. Though there were plenty of white NBA players who had no problem playing with Black players, Twyman’s actions still represented a “beacon of inspiration” to some degree.89 Much like the success that Crispus Attucks had during Robertson’s high school career, it is difficult to quantify the impact on race relations that Twyman and Stokes’ relationship may have had. The effect was certainly positive but their relationship did not suddenly put a stop to the racism that Black players had to endure. However, from a labor perspective, the creation of the Stokes Game in the Catskills can be viewed as a specific moment in time where players started to more outwardly express sentiments of solidarity with their peers.

87 Farabaugh, “The Rochester Royals’ Maurice Stoke,” 20. 88 Bryan Curtis, “The Stokes Game,” Grantland, August 16th, 2013, https://grantland.com/features/bryan-curtis-tragic-inspirational-story-maurice-stokes/ 89 Ron Thomas, They Cleared The Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 181.

38 That the game itself had been created to help pay for the expenses of a crippled former player was one part of the equation. But it was also the simple fact that the NBA did not have a real offseason and the time spent in the Catskills presented an opportunity for business to be conducted.90 It makes sense that the pertinent issues of the time would have been discussed by attendees of the Stokes Game, particularly since so many of the participants were the game’s top players who had the highest levels of clout throughout the league.

Part Four: Robertson’s Actions As Union President

A Brief History of the Players Union

Though the Stokes game served as a breeding ground for labor solidarity and progressive thinking on the part of the players, the outset of a solidified labor movement can be traced back to the formation of the NBA players’ union. The union, also referred to as the NBA Players

Association (NBPA), was created in 1954, just four years after the league had become formally integrated. Boston Celtics star was the driving force behind the construction of the

NBPA. Cousy had sensible reasons for believing that a union was necessary; the NBA was in a spot where it was not clear what the future of the league was and there were concerns that many players carried without a viable way of addressing them. Cousy reached out to older veteran players to broach the idea of forming a union. This was a calculated move because he knew that the leaders of the NBPA would need to be “respected, and not likely to be retaliated against.”91 It was also crucial that Cousy set a precedent for star players taking on pivotal roles within the union because that was likely the only way that the NBPA would have been able to command the

90 Bryan Curtis, “The Stokes Game.” 91 Joshua Mendelsohn, The Cap: How Larry Fleisher and Built the Modern NBA (United States: Nebraska, 2020), 54.

39 attention of the NBA owners. The owners were overwhelmingly focused on making their profits which meant that the star players were of extreme importance. If they wanted something, the owners had to at least listen. At the same time, it took an intense effort from Cousy and other

NBPA representatives to get the owners to come to the table and negotiate.

There were some concessions that the players received throughout the 1950s such as alterations to how fines were carried out and increased meal money. And it has to be acknowledged that the NBA did formally agree to recognize the NBPA in 1957. But these changes were hardly groundbreaking in any sense. The NBA owners dealt with the threat of a union by relying on the same tactics that any management group relies on. They stalled, gave a few meaningless concessions, and stalled some more. A 1964 New York Times article stated:

“Since [1957], virtually no headway has been made in establishing any pension plan, and players have expressed bitterness at what they consider calculated delaying action by the owners.”92

NBA commissioner was tasked with doing everything he could to prevent the union from gaining any ground. Working alongside owner , whose utter contempt for unionization was no secret, Podoloff prevented the NBPA from making any tangible progress on improving working conditions throughout the 1950s. When Podoloff resigned in 1963, the players saw a chance to finally get through to the owners and force them to listen to their requests. At this point, Celtics player Tommy Heinsohn had taken over for Cousy as NBPA president. At the core of the players’ grievances was the desire for a pension plan. The proposal for a pension had been put forth by the union in 1961 but the owners ignored it and refused to offer a legitimate counterproposal. By 1964 the players were rightfully fed up and began to eye the 1964 All-Star Game as a platform where they could use their collective power

92 , “N.B.A. Players Threaten Strike In Dispute Over Pension Plan,” New York Times, January 15, 1964, https://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/15/archives/nba-players-threaten-strike-in-dispute-over-pension-plan.html

40 to get what they were looking for. The idea of going on strike and not playing in the 1964

All-Star Game started to gain momentum and by the time the night of the game arrived, it became a real possibility that the players would do the unprecedented and refuse to play the game.

Prior to when the tip-off was supposed to occur, there were a wide variety of opinions amongst the players about what the best course of action was. As Robertson’s teammate Wayne

Embry noted years later, “If the owners refused to budge, we would be out more than pensions if we went on strike.”93 Though they believed that they were fighting for what was right, the players were clearly in a tough spot. The league itself was also in a precarious position. Revenue was mediocre, NBA games had only recently started to become televised, and working conditions were inadequate. After hours of deliberation, the players put it to a vote and out of the

24 All-Stars, 22 voted to move forward with the strike while two players decided not to.94 The decision to strike proved to be an effective one, partially because NBA commissioner Walter

Kennedy was forced to concede and agree to the arrangement of a pension plan, but more importantly because the night’s events gave the players a concrete example of the power that they could wield when they operated as a unified group. In many ways the threat of a strike in

1964 was the ultimate precursor for Robertson’s lawsuit six years later. Author Sam Smith has said that the strike “was the decisive moment in the development of an NBA player movement that, with some stoppages of play, lawsuits, and invective has truly strengthened the game.”95

The players had seen firsthand the strength they had as a group.

93 Mary Schmitt Boyer and Wayne Embry, The Inside Game: Race, Power, and Politics in the NBA (United States: University of Akron Press, 2004), 128 94 The two players who voted to play the game were Wilt Chamberlain and Lenny Chappell. Chamberlain felt that striking would send the league up in flames while Chappell was simply worried about being cut. 95 Smith, Hard Labor , 31.

41 Robertson’s Status as a Labor Leader

There is a case to be made that Robertson was the league’s most important player even before he put forth his lawsuit in 1970. On the court he displayed an extraordinary combination of physical ability and skill. Although the Royals teams that he found himself on throughout the

1960s never won an NBA title, you would have been hard pressed to find a player who would not have called Robertson one of the greatest talents the league had to offer. Robertson’s starpower made the Royals one of the few teams that could have unseated ’s Celtics during their but the Royals never got over the hump and secured an NBA championship.

In 1963 Robertson and star teammate found themselves at odds after the Royals acquired Lucas and traded away . Boozer was a Black forward who played important minutes for the Royals and the player they got in return for him was Larry Staverman, a white forward who averaged a measly 4.7 during his NBA career. Robertson felt that the trade only occurred because Boozer was the fifth Black player on the Royals roster, a number that the Royals’ front office presumably felt was too high. Robertson would later allude to the lopsided Boozer deal by noting: “A lot of good Negro ballplayers should be in the league but only generally four or five spots are open on a team. We had five until Bob Boozer was traded.”96

Bill Russell shared Robertson’s belief that Boozer was traded because he was Black and he expressed his opinion that the Royals may have actually sacrificed their chance at beating the

Celtics by trading Boozer and getting a much less valuable player in Staverman. In a 1970 Sports

Illustrated article, Russell reflected on the trade by stating: “The Royals could have beaten us, but in my opinion they virtually gave Bob Boozer away to get down to their Black quota.”97 The

96 Bijan C. Bayne, : The Man Who Changed Basketball (United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015), 135. 97 William F. Russell, “Success is a Journey,” Sports Illustrated, June 8th, 1970, http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1083701/index.html

42 Boozer trade continued to have negative consequences for the Royals as “Robertson believed that management promoted Lucas at his expense and that prejudice cost him money and respect.”98 This was a clear-cut example of how the quota system was enforced; too many Black players made owners uncomfortable, even if those Black players had the talent to warrant a spot on the team.

While Robertson’s prestige was due in large part to his production on the court, his exploits off the court had also earned him a reputation for being someone who commanded the respect of his peers and his adversaries. In 1965, when Tommy Heinson felt that it was time to bring in a new NBPA president, Robertson was the logical choice given his status as a bonafide superstar, his attentiveness to the issues that NBA players were dealing with, his general attitude towards the owners, and his race. It was particularly important that the new president be Black because the number of Black players entering the NBA was growing each year. Robertson was arguably the only person who fit the criteria that the circumstances demanded at the time. He excelled at conveying information to other members of the union and he did a phenomenal job of making sure that all his fellow players knew exactly what they were fighting for and why.

Former NBA player has said: “When [Robertson] presented issues to players he would make sure you understood that this is what we needed at this time.”99 He established himself as an outspoken critic of the reserve clause with the understanding that it was what singlehandedly stood in the way of free agency since it allowed teams to maintain a stranglehold on players throughout their entire careers. New York Times journalist Leonard Koppet summed up how important the reserve clause was to the owners by writing: “In a sense...all the fabulous-sounding pension plans, the high salary levels, the bonuses to drafted players and other

98 Aram Goudsouzian, King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution (United States: University of California Press, 2010), 121. 99 Thomas, They Cleared The Lane, 209.

43 benefits are the ransom managements have been paying to hold off outright revolt against the reserve system.”100 The owners could live with having to give the players what they wanted sometimes but the reserve clause was untouchable in their minds.

The reserve clause was not an issue that was unique to professional basketball. In 1969, one year before Robertson decided to take the legal route and sue the NBA, St. Louis Cardinals’ player directly challenged Major League ’s (MLB) enforcement of the reserve clause. Flood had been traded from St. Louis to Philadelphia with absolutely zero say in the matter and he felt that it was time for someone to fight for MLB players’ right to decide where they worked. It should be noted that Flood was not actually the first MLB player to fight against the reserve clause. Previous versions of Flood’s argument were struck down thanks to

“baseball's exemption from antitrust laws, first established in 1921 in a decision by Supreme

Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.”101 The same feelings of uncertainty and skepticism that the NBA players shared prior to the 1964 All-Star Game were present in most MLB players when Flood initiated his lawsuit. Flood’s attempt to eradicate the reserve clause was seen as such a longshot, with such a high risk attached to it, that when it came time for Flood to testify in court, “No active players were there—not even Flood's outspoken teammate Bob Gibson dared to support him.102 Flood ultimately lost his lawsuit but his actions laid the groundwork for real changes to occur down the line. The Supreme Court acknowledged that MLB’s exemption from antitrust laws “was an anomaly and not offered to any other professional sport.”103 By 1976, the

100 Leonard Koppett, “The Reserve Clause: in All Sports Is Control of Players Not Under Contract,” New York Times, September 28, 1975, https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/28/archives/the-reserve-clause-key-in-all-sports-is-control-of-players-not.html 101 Allen Barra, “How Curt Flood Changed Baseball and Killed His Career,” The Atlantic, July 12, 2011, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/07/how-curt-flood-changed-baseball-and-killed-his-career-i n-the-process/241783/ 102 Barra, “How Curt Flood Changed Baseball.” 103 John Hickey, “On Juneteenth, Remembering Curt Flood's Supreme Court Loss OTD in 1972, a Defeat that Forever Altered MLB,” Sports Illustrated, June 19, 2020,

44 reserve clause was eliminated after , the executive director of the MLB Players

Association, was able to leverage that acknowledgement into a courtroom victory. Miller fought to have pitchers Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith declared to be free agents after they each played the 1976 season without having signed contracts. Miller won his argument and the reserve clause was erased. In 1970, Miller had “obtained the right for players to have grievances heard before a third-party neutral arbitrator,” which ultimately gave McNally the ability to go to court and challenge the reserve clause.104 When McNally and Miller went to court to fight for the right to free agency, “the lawyers for Major League Baseball argued that labor arbitration was an improper forum to resolve the issue of free agency because the consequences were dire and abolishing the reserve clause would do irreparable damage to the game of baseball,” an argument that serves as a clear indication of how badly the owners did not want to give up their ability to dictate where MLB players spent their careers. The MLB owners were adamant about not wanting to give up their ability to invoke the reserve clause. While this was going on, the NBA owners were fighting a similar fight.

Robertson was well aware that he would need to be exceptionally meticulous with his plans if he and his fellow NBA players wanted to successfully sue the league. Flimsy arguments would be shot down promptly and if Robertson did not present the players’ grievances in a clear and concise form it would be easy for the owners to stall and poke holes in his assertions. The abolition of the reserve clause was the crux of Robertson’s case but he and his peers were also out to make sure that the NBA did not merge with the ABA. The reason for this was that the

ABA gave the players a way to negotiate better salaries. If an NBA owner did not want to pay a https://www.si.com/mlb/athletics/news/on-juneteen-remembering-curt-floods-supreme-court-loss-otd-in-1972-a-defe at-that-altered-mlb-forever 104 Ben Heuer, “The Boys of Winter: How Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally Brought Down Baseball’s Historic Reserve System,” 12, https://www.law.berkeley.edu/sugarman/Sports_Stories_Messersmith_McNally_Arbitration.pdf

45 player what that player felt like he was worth, the player had the option of signing with an ABA team. A merger would have eliminated this possibility and ultimately depressed player salaries, an outcome that NBA owners would have undoubtedly been perfectly fine with. Ironically, when former NBA player was assembling the nascent ABA, an eventual merger with the NBA was thought to be the logical outcome. Dennis Murphy, a businessman who was heavily involved with the formation of the ABA, admitted: “Certainly by five years we would have either merged with the NBA or been out of business.”105 It was clear that the ABA would not have a long lifespan as a separate entity from the NBA but there was a lot that needed to happen before the two leagues could merge.

It is important to clarify the role that Robertson played leading up to the 1970 lawsuit.

There may be an inclination to view Robertson as a lone figure who took on the NBA all by himself but the reality is that, “He was a leader in the NBPA and put his name at the top of the list of many NBA players who sought to head off what was perceived as multiple legal infractions by the league.”106 Robertson was certainly the main catalyst in the years prior to the lawsuit. In 1967 he and NBPA general counsel Larry Fleisher had put forth a thorough six-point plan outlining the changes that Robertson wanted to see. The proposed changes were not put forth out of nowhere; most of the demands dealt with issues that the players had already voiced their opinions on. The critical difference this time was that Robertson and Fleisher had put together something that was “unambiguous, articulated together, and most importantly, accompanied by a deadline.”107 The six-point plan included demands that the league critically examine the reserve clause, fund the players’ pensions with money from TV revenue, and pay

105 Terry Pluto, (United Kingdom: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 421. 106 Paul D. Staudohar, William B. Gould, Robert C. Berry, Labor Relations in (United Kingdom: Auburn House Publishing Company, 1986), 168. 107 Mendelsohn, The Cap, 54.

46 players for participating in exhibition games. The six-point plan was effectively the prequel to the 1970 lawsuit. It was an admirable attempt by Robertson and Fleisher to actualize the demands of the players and assemble a blueprint for how they could improve their conditions and get the compensation they deserved. Despite how well-constructed Robertson and Fleisher’s plan was, the owners were unimpressed and made no effort to negotiate with Robertson before the deadline of February 15th that he and Fleisher had set. This was where Robertson really started to prove to be the perfect man for the job of union president. He and Fleisher were fed up with the owners’ unwillingness to discuss potential changes and they eventually stated that the players would strike during the 1967 playoffs if a deal did not materialize. This was another important example of the players’ realizing their collective power and utilizing it at the most ideal time. A 1967 LA Times article described the purpose of the threatened strike by stating:

“Although there were side issues such as the form of the players’ contract, now rigidly binding, and the number of exhibition games, the pension plan was the main issue.”108 To some degree the threat of the strike was less about distinct issues such as the pension plan, and more about the overarching aversion that the owners had to even approaching the idea of any theoretical changes to the way the league operated. Still, securing a pension plan was an important goal for the players to achieve. If the players were frustrated with the owners in 1964, they were downright livid in 1967. Again, Walter Kennedy felt the pressure that was being applied and he realized that the league would be in dire straits if the 1967 playoffs were to be cancelled. On March 14th, the players won another victory as Kennedy agreed to renegotiations and stated that “a new pension would be worked out by June 8, 1967.”109 This marked another moment where the players “knew

108 “Players, Owners Settle Dispute; NBA Playoff Strike Off,” Times, March 15, 1967. 109 “Players, Owners Settle Dispute; NBA Playoff Strike Off,” , March 15, 1967.

47 of [their] leverage and used it masterfully.”110 The precedent for the 1970 antitrust lawsuit had been firmly established.

The Robertson Lawsuit

Though the two main goals of Robertson’s lawsuit were to challenge the reserve clause and prevent the ABA from merging with the NBA, the most urgent of the two issues at the time was the threat of the merger. The ABA had been struggling from the moment of its inception and the league had already taken legal action in 1969 to try and stop the NBA from “stealing” the most talented players. The ABA had become so fed up with the fact that the NBA had established itself as the superior league, that the ABA put forth an antitrust lawsuit, accusing

NBA teams of conspiring to “monopolize and eliminate competition in major league professional basketball.” The lawsuit was led by ABA lawyer Frederick Furth, who was attempting to argue that NBA teams “induced players to break their contracts” with ABA teams. 111 This created an awkward situation where leaders of the ABA felt it was in the league’s best interest to merge with the NBA but the NBPA did not want that to occur because it would have eliminated competition between the two leagues. Both the members of the NBPA and the leaders of the

ABA felt that the NBA had effectively created a monopoly but the two parties had different ideas for what the course of action should be. Fleisher was vehement that the players needed to be willing to take legal action and eventually go on strike. At a 1969 press conference two weeks after Walter Kennedy and ABA president James Gardner announced their intentions to merge and hold a common draft, Fleisher was quoted saying that he had been told by one owner that

“since the ABA came into being in 1967, it had done more to increase player salaries than had

110 Curtis Harris, “Establishing Some Freedom: Oscar Robertson and Sam Ervin’s Unlikely Alliance Against the NBA” (PhD diss., American University, 2021), 19. 111 “A.B.A. Sues for $300‐Million, Charging N.B.A. Is Monopoly,” New York Times, March 23, 1972, https://www.nytimes.com/1972/03/23/archives/aba-sues-for-300million-charging-nba-is-monopoly.html

48 been accomplished in the seven years before that.”112 For Robertson, all of his previous experiences had been leading up to this moment. The racism he had experienced throughout his high school and college days, the substandard working conditions he had witnessed since he entered the NBA, the unjust ways that Black players were treated even after the league became integrated, and the looming threat of depressed salaries, all bundled together to push Robertson over the edge. It certainly did not hurt matters that he had the perfect temperament and mental awareness needed to challenge a group as powerful as the NBA owners were. Fleisher has said that Robertson was an ideal union leader largely because, “He had the one great talent necessary for an effective labor negotiator: always distrust the other side.”113 Fleisher’s desire to see legal action from the NBPA was fulfilled and on April 15th, 1970, Robertson and 13 plaintiffs, each representing one of the other 13 teams in the league, sued the NBA in what would go on to become a fierce legal battle that spanned more than half a decade.

On May 4th, 1970, Judge Charles Tenney, who was presiding over the case, issued a ruling mandating that there was to be no merger between the NBA and the ABA, “except that defendants were permitted to negotiate a proposed merger for the sole purpose of petitioning

Congress for antitrust exemption legislation.”114 This essentially meant that the NBA was going to have to get congressional approval for a merger unless the players relented and allowed it.

This was something of a small victory for the NBPA but there was still an enormous amount of work to be done if they were going to win the lawsuit. After Tenney’s injunction, the NBA was forced to go to Congress to try and gain an exception to the antitrust legislation that was standing in the way of a merger. Though NBA lawyers may have been encouraged by the fact that the

112 Sam Goldaper, “Players Group Plans to Fight Proposed Merger of Pro Basketball Teams; FLEISHER RAISES THREAT OF STRIKE,” New York Times, August 20, 1969, https://www.nytimes.com/1969/08/20/archives/players-group-plans-to-fight-proposed-merger-of-pro-basketball.html 113 Robertson, The Big O, 29. 114 Robertson v. National Basketball Association, 389 F. Supp. 867 (S.D.N.Y. 1975)

49 NFL and AFL had been able to merge in 1966 without much pushback, Robertson, Fleisher and other NBPA lawyers delivered a series of depositions that forced the hand of the Senate subcommittee in charge of deciding whether to allow the merger to go through. During one testimony, NBPA attorney Paul Warnke warned that “how Congress treats the economic rights of the Black basketball players who have managed to escape the ghetto by hard work will be noted by all Black Americans.”115 Robertson was the living, breathing embodiment of what Warnke was referencing but his words really applied to all the Black players who had made it to the

NBA. While, the testimonies from Robertson, Fleisher, and their cohort of plaintiffs and NBPA lawyers certainly made an impact on the Senate subcommittee, the NBPA also gained support from Sam Ervin, a senator from North Carolina who established himself as an ardent critic of the

NBA and the owners throughout the hearings. In referencing the owners’ desire for the merger to occur and for the reserve clause to be upheld, combined with their simultaneous refusal to release relevant returns, Ervin fiercely said that that he would “never vote to place any

American under bondage to keep another person from losing money if a person who claims he is losing money will not bring the best evidence to show the truth as to his allegations.”116 Though the NBA players were likely not anticipating such a staunch stamp of approval, they now knew they had serious support from at least one member of Congress. Ervin’s words were terrifying to the owners and they quickly started to realize that even if they were able to accomplish their goal and get approval from Congress to go ahead with the merger, Ervin “was going to question the existence of the draft and everything that bound the NBA together.”117 Ironically, in advocating

115 Professional Basketball: Hearing, Ninety-second Congress, First Session, on S. 2373 .... United States: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972. 116 Professional Basketball: Hearing on S. 2373. 117 Smith, Hard Labor , 114.

50 for a merger, the NBA had put itself in a position where the very structure of the league was put in question.

It struck some members of Congress as odd that ABA leaders had sued the NBA only a few years prior, yet were now trying to fuse both leagues together. Ervin once again delivered a stern critique of this perplexing chain of events, stating that he was incredulous at the ABA’s willingness to “ask for 300 million dollars in damages from the NBA because of alleged monopolistic practices and then come in here to Congress and ask us to legalize these monopolistic practices on their behalf by approving the merger bill.”118 He was unequivocally correct in his line of reasoning and his remarks emphasized the importance of what Fleisher was talking about when he said that Robertson was a stellar candidate for union president because of his inherent distrust of ownership. In questioning why the ABA had sued the NBA and then turned around and petitioned for a merger, Ervin effectively underlined the essential issue which was that both the NBA and ABA owners only cared about how much money was in their pockets. This had always been the case but it became even more obvious as the legal proceedings continued to play out. It is hardly newsworthy that NBA owners chose to prioritize profits. The real issue was that they were breaking established antitrust laws and treating NBA players like property. As the back and forth between the NBPA and the NBA went on and it continued to become clearer that the owners had no interest in anything but retaining as much profit as possible, Robertson’s distrust of ownership started to look increasingly justified.

Three of the economists who were given the task of assessing the financial implications of a merger, gave an endorsement of it as long as the merger included “stipulations providing for revenue sharing, a true free agency, reduction of the indemnities, and elimination of the

118 Professional Basketball: Hearing on S. 2373.

51 territorial restrictions.”119 Two of the economists, Roger G. Noll and Benjamin Okner, issued a report that said they could only recommend that Congress approve the merger “if certain restrictions [were] placed upon the operating rules of the merged entity to guarantee that the public interest is served.”120 This addendum was important because it contextualized the owners’ desire to override federal antitrust law as a matter of public interest. In other words, the owners’ attempt to suppress player salaries was essentially being framed by Noll and Okner as an assault on American free market values. The owners refused to concede since they were being told that they would have to throw out the reserve clause if they wanted the merger to go through. This ultimately caused them to lose their case for acquiring antitrust exemption.

The Robertson Settlement

The question of the merger was only one portion of the Robertson lawsuit and the owners still had to defend themselves against the other allegations in the lawsuit. By now it was 1974 and the deadline of January 4th that Judge Tenney had given the owners to “accept a merger with conditions”, had passed.121 The NBA and ABA were still in a bit of a strange spot where both leagues were fighting to sign the most desirable players, yet simultaneously, there was still ongoing talk of a merger. Former ABA co-founder Dick Tinkham described the relationship between the two leagues, saying “We went back to suing each other and trying to bankrupt each other to sign players and no one was making any money.”122 At the same time, lawyers for the

NBA had started to employ stalling tactics in the league’s ongoing court battle against Robertson and NBPA. This was another example of Robertson’s inherent distrust of ownership proving to

119 David George Surdham, The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 236. 120 Professional Basketball: Hearing on S. 2373, 121 Smith, Hard Labor , 118. 122 Pluto, Loose Balls, 424.

52 be warranted. The owners were not negotiating in good faith; instead they were trying to bleed the players dry. The NBA was well aware that the players did not have an endless supply of cash to pay for legal fees and so, as lawyer Jim Quinn, whose firm was assisting Fleisher in representing the players put it, “They started to do every conceivable thing to make us spend money, endless motions, moving for summary judgments, going back to saying this was all collectively bargained when they wouldn’t even talk to us.”123 The league’s new strategy was to turn the whole lawsuit into a war of attrition and hope that the players would be forced to give up. Years after the lawsuit was settled, David Stern would state matter-of-factly that, as one of the lawyers who was representing the NBA, his “job was to delay.”124 Unfortunately for the

NBA, they simply did not have a strong case for winning the lawsuit. The case had been taken over by Judge Robert L. Carter, and on February 14th, 1974 he issued a crucial decision that was

“highly favorable to the players.” Carter confirmed that he “firmly rejected the NBA’s contention that the issues were a matter of labor negotiation rather than antitrust questions.”125 Robertson was well aware that the entire lawsuit was about the issue of antitrust, at the very least in a figurative sense, if not a literal one. Robertson understood that if the owners and the players were to have a successful NBA it would require some degree of trust between the two parties.

Everything that the owners had done prior to 1970, and everything they did throughout the lawsuit, gave an unmistakable impression that they were not worthy of the players’ trust. For

Robertson, that untrustworthiness was even more poignant thanks to the previous experiences he had with authority figures who proved to be deceitful. Alex Clark, Branch McCracken, and

Walter Kennedy were just a few of the powerful white men who had wronged Robertson either

123 Smith, Hard Labor , 118. 124 Smith, Hard Labor , 119. 125 Leonard Koppett, “Basketball Leagues Seek Ways to Cope With Judge's Strong Antitrust Position,” New York Times, February 26, 1975, https://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/26/archives/basketball-leagues-seek-ways-to-cope-with-judges-strong-antitrust.ht ml

53 directly or indirectly throughout his life. His ability to not give in to anyone who did not have his best interests in mind was part of what had made Robertson such an outstanding candidate for union president and now, it was helping to boost the players’ chances of winning their lawsuit if it were to go to trial.

After Judge Carter’s decision in January of 1974, it became more obvious that the owners would have their backs against the wall if the case went to a trial. In a sense, this was already a win for the players since the odds were heavily against them succeeding to begin with. Ervin’s comments and the testimonies from members of the NBPA had shifted the landscape and the players now felt as though they had a chance to win their lawsuit, or at the very least secure a favorable settlement. Even before 1974, the tides had already been turning. In 1972, after the

NBA refused to agree to the version of the merger that included an abolishment of the reserve clause, the path to victory became harder for the owners. In November of 1972, sportswriter

Leonard Koppett noted that, “All the N.B.A. owners were in favor of the merger in the first place and some of them may now be content to let this obstacle prevent it.”126 At the same time,

Kennedy was quite sure that the owners’ collective position was one that would not allow them to accept a merger if it meant giving up the reserve clause. In 1973, Kennedy said, “Nothing that has reached the commissioner's office indicates their position has changed”, referring to the owners’ feelings about losing the reserve clause.127 In April, 1974, roughly five months after

Judge Carter released his decision, Larry Fleisher penned an op-ed in . It was a bold move but Fleisher had proven that he was capable of making bold moves if he felt his actions would be in the best interest of the players. The entire Robertson case was a bold move in

126 Leonard Koppett, “Ifs, Ands and Buts of Basketball Merger Here Again,” New York Times, November 16, 1972, https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/16/archives/ifs-ands-and-buts-of-basketball-merger-here-again.html 127 “Merger Seen No Closer,” New York Times, August 15, 1973, https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/15/archives/merger-seen-no-closer.html

54 and of itself. Fleisher stated his belief that the eradication of the reserve clause in professional basketball would “soon happen.”128

Meanwhile, Robertson decided to retire after the 1973-74 season and he quickly found a new gig as a color commentator for CBS. Robertson’s efforts as an analyst were not as well-received as his brilliance on the court and he drew the ire of many NBA fans. Shortly after his hiring, owner Paul Snyder sent a letter to Walter Kennedy which included his belief that “all NBA owners should have been advised before the NBA mutually agreed with

CBS that Oscar Robertson will be doing the NBA games during this coming season.”129

Robertson was fired after just one year, an outcome that he believes occurred because “the last thing Paul Snyder and other owners wanted was to have an enemy of the league in a position to sprout opinions and influence the public on basketball matters.”130 Regardless of whether or not

Snyder was the sole reason for Robertson’s firing, the notion that the owners did not want

Robertson to be in a position of influence or power within the hierarchy of the league is certainly a logical one. It was bad enough that owners had not been able to beat the NBPA’s lawsuit but the last thing they wanted was for Robertson to have a platform where he could talk endlessly about how evil the reserve clause was.

The NBPA and the NBA had actually reached a collective bargaining agreement in 1973, even while the two sides were simultaneously battling in court over the Robertson lawsuit. The

1973 agreement included legislation on “minimum salaries, pensions, arbitration procedures, the playoff pool and other matters that had been agreed to separately in the past.”131 However, it did not resolve the issues of the reserve clause or the theoretical merger. Additionally, the agreement

128 Larry Fleisher, “OPINION: The Reserve Clause Is on the Way Out,” New York Times, April 21, 1974, https://www.nytimes.com/1974/04/21/archives/opinion-the-reserve-clause-is-on-the-way-out.html 129 Robertson, The Big O, 307. 130 Robertson, The Big O, 307. 131 “NBA and Players Sign a Basic Pad,” New York Times, March 6, 1973. https://www.nytimes.com/1973/03/06/archives/nbaand-players-sign-a-basic-pact.html

55 was only in place for three years and the pressure for the leagues to merge was mounting. By

1976, the agreement expired and negotiations between both parties involved in the Robertson lawsuit had reached an impasse. The fundamental question was whether or not the owners were willing to give up the reserve clause in exchange for a merger. Robertson and his fellow NBPA representatives had effectively cornered the owners and the NBA lawyers were now in a position where they had to salvage what they could. The case was set to go on trial if a settlement was not reached by June 1st but the NBA’s stalling strategy had both parties in a position where they wanted to avoid having to pay increasingly high legal fees. In January of 1976, representatives from both sides began to work on a settlement. At the core of the settlement were new regulations that would get rid of the reserve clause and install a right-of-first-refusal system,

“under which a player whose contract has expired and who receives an offer from another team can be retained by his original team if that team matches the offer.”132 The college draft was also kept. The settlement was formally agreed to on February 2nd. That same day, Fleisher issued a statement saying, “No issues involving the Robertson suit remain outstanding”, an indication that although the players may have been forced to compromise to some degree, they achieved their goal of getting the reserve clause removed.133 Robertson and the rest of the NBPA had taken on the NBA and won. On July 30th, 1976, Judge Carter approved the settlement, noting in his decision that the $5 million dollar settlement which was to be allocated to the NBPA was “a reasonable exaction from defendants for the price of peace.”134 Carter also opined that after years of back-and-forth between the players and the owners, the Robertson settlement “should make for an era of peace and stability in professional basketball for many years to come.”135 This may

132 Paul D. Staudohar, "Basketball." In Playing for Dollars: Labor Relations and the Sports Business, (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1996), 115. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv1nhmv4.7. 133 Sam Goldaper, “N.B.A., Players Reach Tentative Pact on Suit,” New York Times, February 3, 1976, https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/03/archives/nba-players-reach-tentative-pact-on-suit-players-nba-in-accord.html 134 Robertson v. National Basketball Association, 72 F.R.D. 64 (S.D.N.Y. 1976) 135 Robertson v. National Basketball Association, 72 F.R.D. 64

56 have been wishful thinking on Judge Carter’s part but there was no denying that the Robertson settlement had set the stage for increased player mobility, better working conditions, and ultimately, true free agency.

Conclusion

Although this thesis discusses and analyzes events from the past, it would be foolish to not use some of this space to ponder the future. Robertson, Fleisher, and the rest of the NBPA certainly had the future in mind when they decided to sue the NBA. And here, in this day and age, as the sports world operates at warp speed and the stars of today’s NBA enjoy more luxuries than any prior generation of players, the question must be asked: how far has the NBA really come? There are multiple ways of approaching this question. It would be hard to read this thesis

(or any other scholarly materials on this subject) and come away believing that there have not been real advancements made in terms of player agency, working conditions, and an overall decline of labor malpractice in the NBA. Furthermore, these changes have resulted in the exact opposite of what the owners said they feared would happen when the players fought to have the merger denied. During the congressional hearings ’ owner Herman

Sarkowsky tried to claim that the competition stemming from the ABA’s coexistence with the

NBA was disastrous for the NBA and that if it continued to occur, “it would most certainly be instrumental in the destruction of professional basketball.”136 He could not have been more wrong.137 50 years after Sarkowsky’s comments, the popularity of the NBA continues to rise. The combination of social media, an unprecedented influx of talent entering the league, and a

136 Professional Basketball: Hearing on S. 2373. 137 It’s fair to argue that Sarkowsky may have been right about the NBA failing if the ABA had been allowed to exist but he was only using this argument to justify keeping the reserve clause. Sarkowsky was essentially trying to say that if the players improved their agency, the NBA would fail. His prediction has clearly proven to be incorrect.

57 collective trend towards what can only be described as nirvana on the offensive end of the court

(both in terms of and aesthetics), has made the league exciting, entertaining, invigorating, and worthy of attention from millions of fans. Beyond the actual on-court play, the storylines and rumors that dominate offseason news cycles have ushered in an era of fans whose attentiveness to free agency exists on a greater scale than any previous generation. European soccer’s transfer window is perhaps the only other of time where the energy and devotion to staying up to date on the latest contract situations and potential signings for one’s favored team can be matched. This would have been unthinkable in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea of player “agency” hardly existed in the NBA and any agency that a player had was certainly not

“free”. The language used by most people who were opposed to free agency tended to make it sound like the sport itself would somehow cease to exist as a form of entertainment if players were afforded the basic ability to choose where they worked. To recognize how far the league has come, one simply has to look at how hard the owners fought from 1970 to 1976 to stifle any potential paths towards free agency.

Former Spirits of Saint Louis (ABA) owners Ozzie and Daniel Silna provide one case that exemplifies how the popularity of the NBA has risen in the past 50 years. When the 1976 settlement was reached, the Spirits were one of the ABA teams that were not given a spot in the

NBA. The Silnas’ lawyer, Donald Schupak demanded that they receive some sort of restitution in return for agreeing to fold their franchise. As part of the settlement reached with the owners of the four ABA teams that were entering the NBA, the Silnas received 1/7th of a share of the television money from each of the four ABA teams, to be paid out in perpetuity. By 2014, the league’s annual payouts to the Silnas were so exorbitant that the two sides reached a settlement

58 that saw the Silnas receive a “$500 million up front payment.”138 How much television revenue would the league need to be raking in each year in order for an immediate payment of $500 million dollars to be considered preferable to paying the Silnas 1/7th of the TV money from the four ABA teams on an annual basis? Since the start of a new TV deal in 2016, the league has collected $2.66 billion dollars in TV money each year, a number that will almost certainly increase in 2025 when the NBA’s current contract with WarnerMedia and Disney is set to expire.139

Robertson’s lawsuit was a landmark moment in NBA labor history and the subsequent settlement has clearly had a strong impact on how the NBA currently operates. However, there are plenty of other moments in NBA history that have also shifted the course of labor relations between the players and owners. The inception of the , an apparatus that was the first of its kind in professional sports, has resulted in significant ramifications for all NBA players.

When the idea of a salary cap was being discussed in 1983, NY Times sportswriter Ira Berkow wrote that, “A salary cap is anathema to the free-enterprise system and smacks of antitrust violation.”140 Berkow’s assessment was accurate; a cap on player salaries was just another form of NBA owners trying to avoid paying their players what they were actually worth. The league’s superstars have been particularly affected by the installation of the salary cap, since it prevents them from earning the higher salaries that they would command in an uncapped market. Other players have also had their earning potential negatively affected by the salary cap. Rookies who enter the NBA via the draft are immediately tied to the rooke scale which sets a capped dollar

138 Richard Sandomir, “Payout May Come for an A.B.A. Team That Is Long Gone,” New York Times, January 7, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/sports/basketball/payout-may-come-for-an-aba-team-that-is-long-gone.html?r ef=sports&_r=0 139 Jabari Young, “NBA is next up for a big rights increase, and $75 billion is the price,” CNBC, March 22, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/22/nba-is-next-up-for-a-big-rights-increase-and-75-billion-is-the-price.html 140 Ira Berkow, “Sports of the Times; The NBA Money Game,” New York Times, March 4, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/04/sports/sports-of-the-times-the-nba-money-game.html.

59 amount on the first contract that they can sign. Higher draftees earn higher starting salaries but no rookie is able to negotiate a contract that would allow them to be paid more than the designated amount for the pick that they were selected with. The fact that a rookie’s contract is all but set in stone can create scenarios where a talented young player finds himself being paid a fraction of the value that he’s providing for his team.141 This is what happened in 2014 when San

Antonio Spurs star won NBA Finals MVP at just 22 years old. Leonard was drafted with the 15th pick in 2011 and his salary for the first three years of his career was

$1,394,017 as a rookie, $1,809,840 as a second year player, and $1,887,840 during the year he won Finals MVP. Given that “the average NBA salary in 2013-2014 was about $5 million, and eight out of twelve teammates on the Spurs roster earned more than Leonard that season,” it is clear that Leonard was woefully undercompensated because of the rookie scale.142 With the salary cap and rookie scale firmly in place, the only feasible way that rookie players could be given the freedom to negotiate their own contracts would be if the draft were abolished. That change has been suggested by some sportswriters and people around the NBA, such as New

Orleans Pelicans coach , but it has yet to gain traction with the league’s big decision-makers.143 Given that it would ultimately require NBA owners to fork over more money to rookie players who provide more value than the amount assigned via the rookie scale, it is not hard to see why it would be difficult to get the owners on board with abolishing the draft.

141 A standard contract for a first round pick includes two guaranteed years and then two team options in the third and fourth years. The team options give a franchise the choice of retaining a player or letting him leave. The annual compensation is set by the league when they assign dollar amounts to each pick. Teams are allowed to pay as little as 80% of that assigned dollar amount or as much as 120% and first round picks usually tend to sign for the full 120%. 142 Derek J. Rowe, "It's Time to Retire the NBA's Rookie Salary Scale," Sports Lawyers Journal 24 (2017): 2, https://www.sportslaw.org/docs/Time_to_Retire_NBAs_Rookie_Salary_Scale_Rowe.pdf 143 Alec Nathan, “Stan Van Gundy Says He’d Get Rid of NBA Draft, Make Rookies Enter as Free Agents,” Bleacher Report, September 30th, 2017, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2736044-stan-van-gundy-says-hed-get-rid-of-nba-draft-make-rookies-enter-as-fre e-agents

60 Perhaps sportswriter William Rhoden was correct when he wrote in 2016 that, “No matter how rosy things seem now, the N.B.A. and the union inevitably will face continued confrontation over basketball-related income.”144 Given the four lockouts that have occurred since 1995, as well as the flurry of legal cases pitting player against league that have occurred since 1976, there is quite the historical precedent for Rhoden’s prediction. Even just a decade ago, the players and owners found themselves embroiled in a fierce lockout that resulted in a shortened 2011-12 season. As writer Abe Beame delicately points out, the main difference between NBA owners nowadays in comparison to when Robertson was NBPA president, is that

“The owners are older, richer, and increasingly more sophisticated than the bad old days when

Larry Fleisher got to spar with fucking morons like Ted Stepien.”145146 Still, the owners’ playbook when it comes to labor disputes includes many of the same tactics it always has. It should come as no surprise that one of the complaints from the owners during negotiations in

2011-12 was that their teams were losing money. This was the same complaint the owners had when the NBPA was fighting against a merger and it is yet another example of the owners caring only about their profits. Over the past 50 years, NBA owners have constantly proved, through both their actions and words, that Oscar Robertson was right to distrust them. Not only was

Robertson correct to assume that the owners never had the players’ best interests in mind, he also understood that, for the owners, the threat of losing money would always be paramount.

144 William C. Rhoden, “Before Vast Riches, Free Agency’s Focus Was Freedom,” New York Times, July 10, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/sports/basketball/oscar-robertson-rule-free-agency-nba.html 145 Abe Beam, “Never Bored Again: A Definitive Ranking of NBA Players Association Directors,” Passion of the Weiss, May 9th, 2021, https://www.passionweiss.com/2021/05/09/a-definitive-ranking-of-nba-players-association-directors/ 146 Ted Stepien was the owner of the from 1980 to 1983. During his three years as owner of the Cavaliers he displayed a chaotic ineptitude and general aversion to making sound transactions or logical roster moves. In just three years, he traded away so many first round picks that the NBA had to create the “Ted Stepien Rule” which barred teams from trading first round picks in back-to-back drafts.

61 Knowing this, Robertson and the NBPA effectively leveraged the owners’ unwillingness to lose money in the long run, into a settlement that resulted in the abandonment of the reserve clause.

In a 2017 interview with former star Kevin Garnett, Robertson stated his opinion that “the Oscar Robertson Rule changed basketball.”147148 Robertson is well aware of how much money there is in the game of basketball nowadays but instead of complaining about the large salaries that players earn today, he understands those contracts to simply be the product of a system that has allowed players to navigate their careers more freely than they could before 1970. Of course, the current system of free agency did not appear out of thin air after the Robertson settlement in 1976. Although the NBPA had managed to get rid of the reserve clause, the right-of-first-refusal had been put into effect after the settlement was reached.

This meant that even though a team could not hold the rights to a player in perpetuity, that team was allowed to match any contract offer that came from another team. This lasted until 1988 when a new CBA was negotiated which included a stipulation that “players who had been in the league at least seven seasons and were going into their third contract could immediately experience unrestricted free agency.”149 In some sense, this meant that Robertson and the NBPA did not fully achieve their objective until more than a decade after the Robertson settlement was reached. One could even argue that with the amateur draft in place and certain salary cap exceptions that make it easier for teams to retain players they drafted after their rookie contracts expire, Robertson’s ultimate goal of genuine freedom of choice for all NBA players still has not been reached. This is where the question of how far the league has actually come must be asked.

The collective reaction to the suggestion that the draft be abolished would likely sound similar to

147 Robertson, interview. 148 The “Robertson Rule” is just another name for the 1976 settlement that resulted in the removal of the reserve clause. 149 Ben Pickman, “The First NBA to Sign Never Expected This Kind of Movement,” New York Times, July 5, 2019, https://www.si.com/nba/2019/07/05/basketball-free-agency-tom-chambers.

62 the collective reaction to the suggestion of free agency back in 1970. That is to say, it would not be well-received by the owners. It is not hard to envision the same arguments that the owners gave for keeping the reserve clause, being made by today’s owners if they were to be faced with the prospect of the draft being disbanded. In a different article published in 2019, Rhoden acutely laid out how the same playbook that was used in 1970 would be brought out to fight against the abolition of the draft. He pointed out that, “The arguments against total freedom in the NBA are familiar: Unfettered free agency will be the death of the league. The big markets will get all of the best players.”150 And so, the league finds itself at a critical juncture in 2021. There is a path forward that leads to a world in which NBA players do have the ability to choose where they work, regardless of their time served, status in the league, or previous contracts. For that reality to come to fruition, NBA players will need to collectively take a stance as tough as the one Oscar

Robertson took in 1970.

150 William C. Rhoden, “Free Agency Is a Lie That Keeps NBA Players Shackled to Teams,” The Undefeated, June 28, 2019, https://theundefeated.com/features/free-agency-is-a-lie-that-keeps-nba-players-shackled-to-teams/.

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Preston, Charles. “‘Mr. Basketball’ May Spend College Days on West Coast.” Indianapolis Recorder, June 7, 1947. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INR19470607-01.1.11&srpos=1&e=------194-en-20-I NR-1--txt-txIN-mr.+basketball+may+spend----1947--.

Pfeiffer, Casey. “Bill Garrett and the Integration of Big Ten Basketball, Part 1.” Indiana Historical Bureau of the Indiana State Library, March 15, 2016. https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/gentlemans-agreement/.

Rhoden, William C. “Before Vast Riches, Free Agency’s Focus Was Freedom.” New York Times, July 10, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/sports/basketball/oscar-robertson-rule-free-agency-nba.ht ml.

Rhoden, William C. “Free Agency Is a Lie That Keeps NBA Players Shackled to Teams.” The Undefeated, June 28, 2019. https://theundefeated.com/features/free-agency-is-a-lie-that-keeps-nba-players-shackled-to-teams /.

Robertson, Oscar. “When the Big O First Played the Garden: 56 in ’58.” New York Times, March 9, 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/sports/basketball/09robertson.html.

Russell, William F. “Success is a Journey.” Sports Illustrated, June 8th, 1970. http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1083701/index.html.

66 Sandomir, Richard. “Payout May Come for an A.B.A. Team That Is Long Gone.” New York Times, January 7, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/sports/basketball/payout-may-come-for-an-aba-team-that-i s-long-gone.html?ref=sports&_r=0.

Shapiro, Leonard. “Coverage of LeBron James's Decision Brings ESPN's Integrity Into Question Yet Again.” Washington Post, July 13, 2010. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/13/AR2010071305908.html.

Shouler, Kenneth. “The Big O.” Cigar Aficionado, March/April 2005. https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/the-big-o-6186.

Spears, Marc J. “In Terms of History, These Men Get The Picture.” Boston Globe, February 21, 2008. http://archive.boston.com/sports/articles/2008/02/21/in_terms_of_history_these_men_get_pictur e/.

Tax, Jeremiah. “What Price Glory For Oscar.” Sports Illustrated, January 26, 1959. https://vault.si.com/vault/1959/01/26/what-price-glory-for-oscar.

West, Evan. “Remember The Tigers.” Indianapolis Monthly, March 24, 2014. https://www.indianapolismonthly.com/arts-and-culture/sports/remember-the-tigers.

Williams, Bob. “Attucks Appears Powerful Again.” Indianapolis, n.d. https://ulib.iupuidigital.org/digital/collection/CAttucks/id/6598.

Williams, Bob. “Hot Attucks Downs Broad Ripple.” Indianapolis, n.d. https://ulib.iupuidigital.org/digital/collection/CAttucks/id/6603.

Winn, Luke. “The Freshman: From Wilt...To Manning...To Wiggins.” Sports Illustrated, October 14, 2013. https://vault.si.com/vault/2013/10/14/the-freshman.

Young, Jabari. “NBA is next up for a big rights increase, and $75 billion is the price.” CNBC, March 22, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/22/nba-is-next-up-for-a-big-rights-increase-and-75-billion-is-the- price.html.

Journal Articles

Du Bois, W.E.B. “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?” The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (1935): 329, doi:10.2307/2291871.

Farabaugh, Pat. “The Rochester Royals’ Maurice Stokes: Kodak City’s (and the NBA’s) First Black Basketball Star.” Rochester History 76, no. 1 (2014): 1-20. https://www.libraryweb.org/~rochhist/v76_2014/v76i1.pdf.

67 Gondo, Nancy. “He Combined Competition, Laughter To Wow 'Em; Create Your Market: Playing Up To The Crowd Helped Abe Saperstein Spin His Basketball Barnstormers Into A Harlem Legend.” Investor's Business Daily, (January 2006): 1-2. https://ezproxy.haverford.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/he-combined-co mpetition-laughter wow-em-create/docview/1033219437/se-2?accountid=11321.

Goudsouzian, Aram. ““Ba-ad, Ba-a-ad Tigers”: Crispus Attucks Basketball and Black Indianapolis in the 1950s.” Indiana Magazine of History 96, no. 1 (2000): 7-32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27792219.

Goudsouzian, Aram. “Can Basketball Survive Chamberlain? The Kansas Years of Wilt the Stilt.” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 28 (Fall 2005): 153-154. https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2005autumn_goudsouzian.pdf.

Hamilton, C. Horace. “Social Effects of Mechanization of Agriculture.” Rural Sociology 4, no. 1 (1939): 3. http://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=chla5075626_4290_001#page/5/mode/1up.

IHB. Rep. Crispus Attucks High School. Indiana Historical Bureau (2014): 3. https://www.in.gov/history/files/49.1992.1review.pdf.

May, Lissa. “Indiana Avenue and Crispus Attucks High School.” In David Baker: A Legacy in Music, by Herzig Monika, Davis Nathan, Dyas JB, Hasse John Edward, Jenkins Willard, Wallarab Brent, Ward-Steinman David, and Jones Quincy. (2011): 3. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzdr2.6.

Miller, R. Baxter. “Traces of Sport from the Harlem Renaissance: The Embedded Narrative.” CLA Journal 59, no. 2 (December 2015): 134-35. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44325568.

Pierce, Richard.“‘Little Progress ‘Happens’”: Faburn E. DeFrantz and the Indianapolis Senate Avenue YMCA.” Indiana Magazine of History 108, no. 2 (2012): 101-103. doi:10.5378/indimagahist.108.2.0098.

Ratchford, Jamal L. “The LeBron James Decision in the Age of Obama in From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line.” ed. Chris Lamb (2016): 585. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1d9nhwr.25.

Rowe, Derek J. "It's Time to Retire the NBA's Rookie Salary Scale." Sports Lawyers Journal 24 (2017): 2. https://www.sportslaw.org/docs/Time_to_Retire_NBAs_Rookie_Salary_Scale_Rowe.pdf.

Staudohar, Paul D. ““Basketball” In Playing for Dollars: Labor Relations and the Sports Business.” (1996): 115. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv1nhmv4.7.

68 Surdham, David George. “Conclusion: The NBA Becomes “Major League” in The Rise of the National Basketball Association.” (2012): 165. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt3fh694.11.

Thornbrough, Emma Lou. “Segregation in Indiana during the Klan Era of the 1920's.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, no. 4 (1961): 617. doi:10.2307/1889600.

Books

Bayne, Bijan C. Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball. United States: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015.

Boyer, Mary Schmitt and Wayne Embry. The Inside Game: Race, Power, and Politics in the NBA. United States: University of Akron Press, 2004.

Bradley, Bill. Life on the Run. United States: RosettaBooks, 2014.

Goudsouzian, Aram. King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution. United States: University of California Press, 2010.

Graham, Tom and Rachel Graham Cody. Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball. United States: Indiana University Press, 2008.

Fuller, A. James. Indiana's 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State. United States: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2016.

Lenehan, Michael. Ramblers: Loyola Chicago 1963—The Team That Changed The Color of College Basketball. United States: Agate Publishing, 2013.

MacMullan, Jackie, Dan Klores, and Rafe Bartholomew. Basketball: A Love Story. United States: Crown, 2018.

Mendelsohn, Joshua. The Cap: How Larry Fleisher and David Stern Built the Modern NBA. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020.

Moore, Leonard J. Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928. United Kingdom: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Perry, Michael and Nick Lachey. Tales From Cincinnati Bearcats Basketball. United States: Sports Pub., 2004.

Pluto, Terry. Loose Balls. United Kingdom: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Pluto, Terry. Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

Robertson, Oscar. The Big O: My Life, My Times, My Game. United States: Rodale Books, 2003.

69 Smith, Sam. Hard Labor : The Battle That Birthed the Billion-Dollar NBA. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2017.

Staudohar, Paul D., William B. Gould, and Robert C. Berry. Labor Relations in Professional Sports. United Kingdom: Auburn House Publishing Company, 1986.

Surdham, David George. The Big Leagues Go to Washington: Congress and Sports Antitrust, 1951-1989. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

Thomas, Ron. They Cleared The Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Thornbrough, Emma Lou. Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Theses/Dissertations

Harris, Curtis. “Establishing Some Freedom: Oscar Robertson and Sam Ervin’s Unlikely Alliance Against the NBA.” PhD diss., American University, 2021.

Heuer, Ben. “The Boys of Winter: How Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally Brought Down Baseball’s Historic Reserve System.” https://www.law.berkeley.edu/sugarman/Sports_Stories_Messersmith_McNally_Arbitration.pdf

Government/Legal Documents

Roosevelt, Franklin D. Executive Order 8802, “Prohibition of Discrimination In the Defense Industry,” Code of Federal Regulations, Title 3 (1941 comp.)

Professional Basketball: Hearing, Ninety-second Congress, First Session, on S. 2373 .... United States: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972.

Robertson v. National Basketball Association, 72 F.R.D. 64 (S.D.N.Y. 1976)

Robertson v. National Basketball Association, 389 F. Supp. 867 (S.D.N.Y. 1975)

Interviews

Area 21: Oscar Robertson on How He Changed the NBA, December 17, 2017, Interview by Kevin Garnett, 00:48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT2

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