St. Andrew's Episcopal School

The NBA Lockouts of 1995 and 1998: A Sport Agent’s Perspective

Interviewer: Cheyenne Polk Interviewee: Mr. Instructor: Mr. David Brandt

February 14, 2012

St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 1 Table of Contents

Interviewee Release Form…………………………………………………………………2

Interviewer Release………………………………………………………………………..3

Statement of Purpose……………………………………………………………………...4

Biography………………………………………………………………………………….5

Historical Contextualization -- “Locked Out: The NBA Lockouts of 1995 and

1998…………………………………………………………………………...... 7

Interview Transcription…………………………………………………………………..15

Time Indexing Log………………………………………………………………………33

Interview Analysis……………………………………………………………………….34

Works Consulted…………………………………………………………………………37

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Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this oral history project is to provide one with a better understanding of the NBA lockouts of 1995 and 1998 and present aspects of them that only someone who took part in them can provide. Through an interview with David Falk, an NBA sports agent who represented athletes like , one can obtain a closer and more personal understanding of the lockouts and their impact on the NBA.

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Biography

David Falk was born in 1950 in Long Island, New York, the second of three children. His father ran two butcher shops in Long Island while his mother worked as a language interpreter during World War II. Falk attended and graduated from Douglas

MacArthur High School in Levittown, New York. In 1972, he graduated from Syracuse

University with a degree in economics. In 1975, he attended George Washington

University Law School where he received his Juris Doctorate.

Falk worked for a few large firms during law school, worked for the government, and finally got an internship in Washington that represented professional tennis players called Dell, Craighill, and Fentress and Benton (later known as ProServ). ProServ had a good reputation with The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because they represented a number of North Carolina players. In 1984, Michael Jordan was taken by The Chicago Bulls in the NBA draft and signed by Falk and his colleague

Donald Dell. Falk created an endorsement relationship between Jordan and Nike. This

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Polk 6 was one of the most successful endorsements in history. Falk stopped working as an agent for Michael Jordan when Jordan bought The Charlotte Bobcats.

Mr. Falk has received awards including the “100 Most Important Workers in

America” and a teaching award for Syracuse University. Falk now has his own college in sports management at Syracuse where he teaches negotiations and marketing. Falk has also written a book called “The Bald Truth”. Lastly, he has started a golf company and a

Jet company called Marquis Jet.

David Falk was married in 1974 to Rhonda Frank. They had two children. His first daughter, Daina, was born in 1983 while his second, Jocelyn, was born in 1988. In his free time, Mr. Falk likes to play golf.

St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 7 Locked Out: The NBA Lockouts of 1995 and 1998

Basketball has become a crucial part of American culture, but when its system shuts down it is up to the players, agents, and owners to come together to get it up and running again. An NBA lockout is when the players on the teams and the owners of the teams cannot decide on a salary for the players because the owners of teams want to lower the player’s wages. They threaten to stop the employees from working if they do not agree to it. In the past, this may have been effective because of the abundance of control the owners had over the players, but now that basketball players have gained more power in the sports world, they can demand to keep their salaries the same. This issue has made lockouts more difficult to resolve. David Falk played a key role in

Michael Jordan’s career, especially during the two lockouts.

There are moments in everyone’s lives when you have to trust that your

advisor will look you in the eye and tell you the truth, even when it’s not

what you want to hear. I always knew that David would tell me what he

truly felt even when it wasn’t popular or politically correct. (Jordan 11)

At the time, Falk was a sports agent for Michael Jordan, who is said to be the best basketball player who ever played in the NBA.

“The best there ever was. The best there ever will be” (Anderson 66). To understand David Falk’s influence on the NBA, one must examine the lockouts of 1995 and 1998 and Michael Jordan’s athletic career to gain insight.

Basketball, in contrast, has emerged not only as an Olympic sport, but also

as a game that is played virtually everywhere throughout the world. One

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reason is its simplicity. All you need is a ball and a hoop. Another reason

is its appeal as a sport that can be played informally with five members on

a team. Or four. Or three. Or two. Or even one. In many playgrounds, one-

on one is the basic game. And if there’s no one else around, you can play

basketball by yourself, a solitary shooter out there aiming a ball at a hoop.

A lockout occurs when the team owners and players in the NBA cannot

decide on a salary for the players. The union is the group of players of the

NBA that try to negotiate for their salary. (Anderson 137)

Basketball slowly began to build on its legacy, but it was not until around 1980 until it started to become popular. It was the astonishment at Michael Jordan’s success that attracted a large population of America.

When Michael Jordan joined them in the autumn of 1984, the Chicago

Bulls were on the ropes. They had won twenty-seven and lost fifty-five

games the previous year. A typical crowd filled only one-third of the

Chicago Coliseum’s seats. The franchise’s estimated worth was 18.7

million – only a fraction of some other franchises – and dropping.

Television audiences were disappearing. Within the next ten years, Jordan

became the most widely recognized and probably wealthiest athlete on

earth. The Bulls sold out the old Coliseum, then their new United Center,

and had thousands of names on a wait-list for season tickets. (LaFeber 49)

Michael Jordan was revolutionizing the NBA. He was bringing back the

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fans and popularity to basketball. The United States needed someone to

make history if they were going to be enticed.

Soon players were gaining so much power and respect that they were not ready to give up the gains in pay they had received from the owners. The players wanted a soft salary cap, meaning the teams could find a loophole to exceed the salary cap, and the owners wanted a hard cap. The 1995 basketball season could not begin if they did not reach an agreement, but soon it just became disputes between the players, the players union, and the agents of the players. David Falk was criticized because he was attacking other players while sticking with his own superstar clients, such as Michael Jordan. Falk says, “We had to organize the agents in 1995 to induce their clients to decertify the union in an effort to get better rules for all players” (351). The lockout did not have much of an effect on the NBA season itself, but there had been hostility and mayhem while trying to resolve the issue.

“The lockout lasted until September 1995 and no games were affected because the league was between seasons” (Bukszpan).

On the other hand, the 1998 lockout was actually between the owners of the players and the players themselves. The NBA had always been able to reach an agreement before the season began in the past two NBA lockouts. One in 1996 lasted just three hours. The NBA was the only league not to be denied a game due to a strike or a stoppage in the system, but in 1998 that changed. The players were getting paid too much for the teams to make a profit off of their income. Although there were salary caps for the players, the owners were allowed to spend an excess of money trying to re-sign their St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 10 players. In 1998, the Union negotiated rules that limited superstar salaries and redistributed the revenues that were shared with the league to the middle class players.

In both 1995 and 1998, the NBPA became embroiled in a controversial

negotiation with the league over a new collective bargaining agreement. In

1998, the impasse led the league to lock out the players, who lose nearly

40 percent of the season and hundreds of millions of dollars they never

recouped, all because the players had absolutely no understanding of an

essential concept in negotiations: You’ve got to know when to fold ‘em.

(Falk 248)

With background information on the lockouts of 1995 and 1998, it is easier to understand why they had such a big impact on the NBA.

Athletes of every major sport league were gaining influence throughout The

United States during the lockouts of 1995 and 1998. As time progressed, owners were less of the player’s owner and more like their advisor. Racial discrimination was also becoming less common and people treating the athletes with disrespect were becoming a rarity. Michael Jordan had broken a racial barrier by exemplifying his great athletic talent in basketball.

But Jordan was not just an athlete; he was an African-American athlete

who earned $30 million a year for playing with the Bulls and twice that

amount from his endorsements and personal businesses. Within his own

lifetime, African-American athletes had been victimized and exploited –

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not made multimillionaires. They were also often condemned for choosing

merely to dunk or catch footballs, rather than acting as role

models for future doctors, lawyers, or business leaders. (LaFeber 28)

The NBA was starting to treat the players less like objects they owned and controlled and more like a talented co-worker. Although this was a big step for athletes in the NBA, it made it more difficult to deny the athlete of something they wanted, such as keeping a soft salary cap.

Owners used to have contracts that would bind the players to them against their will for years at a time, but now players had more liberties and freedoms that made resolving arguments so much harder. In addition, the owners needed a hard salary cap on the athletes to keep very skilled recruits from going to the same teams. A hard salary cap means that one team can not offer more than the other, so there is no biased on which teams would be better to play for. If one team, such as the Chicago Bulls, offers a higher salary than another team offers, then the skilled players are going to want to get paid more to be on that team, thus there will only be certain teams that are very good. In the

NBA, there are seven main teams that typically claim the champion title: The Chicago

Bulls, Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs, Boston Celtics, , and the

Houston Rockets.

“The Hard Cap will make the league spread out the superstars more evenly and equally. The owners would not be able to pay trillions (I’m exaggerating) for all these mega stars to join one team unless they take the undesirable route of a pay cut”

(Freeman). St. Andrew's Episcopal School

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If players and owners could decide on an appropriate salary that was also under the spending cap, they would be able to make a constant profit, but things were not like this during the lockouts of 1995 and 1998. Even now the players are not willing to give up the raises they have earned, so the teams continue to dedicate most of their income to paying the players.

There are pros and cons to a hard cap. If the NBA and NBPA could agree

on a magical figure where players could be content with their salaries and

all owners could spend up to the cap and to still turn a profit, the NBA

could see an increased parity across the league, as teams in big cities (e.g.

Los Angeles Lakers) or teams with billionaire owners (e.g. Orlando

Magic) would not be able to stockpile All-Star starters while also having

tremendous depth on their benches. (Tolnick)

This quote is saying that it is difficult to find a figure for a salary both the owners and the players could agree on. Players want to receive as much money as possible, so if they were really good they would want a team that would pay them more than the other players. Also, owners for less successful teams want a hard cap so that all the teams are equally enticing. If one team is more attractive than the other, the athlete is going to want to go to that team and then all the good players will only be on that team.

Finally, since the players were not unionized in the past, owners exerted much control in the bargaining process of individual players. The unionization by the players created collective bargaining with the owners that resulted in uniform rules. Athletes also started to hire agents, who generally were lawyers to negotiate on their behalf with the St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 13 teams. Throughout the last twenty-five years, the biggest benefits that have resulted for team sports athletes from this are more liberal free agency, salaries based on revenue sharing, and health, welfare, and retirement benefits.

Historians have interpreted the period of the NBA lockouts career to be some of some of the most troublesome times in the history of basketball, but are convinced fans have a short-term memory and will forget them easily. On the other hand, owners and players work relentlessly on negotiating a deal that will affect their career and salary, but the fans just want to watch the game. They are not inclined to dwell in the past because it does not affect them. Once the deal is settled, they will stop complaining about how much basketball they had missed out on because of the lockouts and just enjoy the games.

Also, Michael Jordan has revolutionized basketball. He made it popular throughout America and his legacy has left an imprint on fans. At first, when he retired, basketball had a major decline in its publicity, but started to pick back up again later on

2010 was the busiest season for the NBA (Dicker). The NBA took big hits during lockout of 1998 and Michael Jordan’s retirement, but recovered none-the-less, showing that NBA fans stick around for excitement.

Entertainment plays a key role in everyday American society. Issues like the lockouts in the NBA are not recognized as significant once they are resolved because fans have their entertainment back. When the disorder is still going on, many NBA employees work endlessly on finding a way to get the system up and running again. David Falk,

Michael Jordan’s old advisor, is one of these people. He tried to get his clients to take a more active role in understanding the union’s positions during collective bargaining. In St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 14 addition, he encouraged his clients to express their positions so that the Union was informed about the issues most important to these players. Whether it be advocating on behalf of his clients with teams, selling their endorsement services to companies, or encouraging and teaching his clients to protect their rights with their union, David Falk is a super agent.

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Polk 15 Interview Transcription Interviewee/ Narrator: David Falk Interviewer: Cheyenne Polk Location: Mr. Falk’s home, Maryland Date: January 22, 2012 This interview was reviewed and edited by Cheyenne Polk

Cheyenne Polk: This is Cheyenne Polk and I am interviewing David Falk on the topic of the NBA as a part of the American Century Oral History Project. The interview took place on January 22nd, 2012 at Mr. Falk’s house located in Rockville. This interview was recorded using an ipod. So Mr. Falk, what was it like growing up in New York in the

1960s and 70s?

David Falk: I guess in hindsight it was sort of sheltered. We lived in a small community in Long Island, close to Levittown which was a community built for returning soldiers from the Korean war. My childhood, no one went to camp, no one had music lessons, we just sort of went to school and played a lot of ball.

CP: Okay, so, how did the experiences from your childhood get you to your career?

DF: Both parents were first generation Americans,

CP: Uh-huh

DF: and my mother’s side of the family was very, all professional people; doctors and lawyers, and my mom always dreamed that I’d become a supreme-court justice, so from a St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 16 very early age I always wanted to be a lawyer and I always loved sports, so in college I was able to combine my interests and get into this business.

CP: Okay, you just answered my next question. I was going to ask what you dreamed of being when you were a kid, so that’s good. So Syracuse is known for its sports majors.

What did you major in college?

DF: Actually, there was no sports major in Syracuse when I was there.

CP: Oh, wow.

DF: But I majored in economics, which was actually a very good background, I think, for business.

CP: Okay. And what jobs did you do leading up to working with Michael Jordan?

DF: Well, when I was a kid, I did a whole variety sort of blue-collar jobs. My father was a butcher. I worked for him in the shop. I was a delivery boy. I was a bus boy in a restaurant. I worked at warehouses. I drove trucks. When I was in law school, I worked for a few large law firms. I worked for the government for a while. And then I finally got sort of an internship at a small law firm in Washington that represented professional tennis players. St. Andrew's Episcopal School

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CP: How did you come across this internship?

DF: I just networked a lot of people and tried to meet as many people as I could sort of in the sports management industry, it was an infancy at the time. And everyone told me if you lived in Washington D.C. and you go out of school there was a small firm called

Dell, Craighill, and Fentress and Benton that represented tennis players, so I called repeatedly and they weren’t hiring so they gave me a job for free.

CP: Oh, wow. [laughs] So we’re going to shift in to the lockout times.

DF: Okay.

CP: What were the signs that you saw that led you to believe the 1995 and 1998 lockouts would occur?

DF: Well first of all, the union, which represents all the players, had been founded and managed from 1965 to 1988 by a gentleman named [Lawrence Fleisher] who was very bright. And he got all the star players involved. When he died in 1988 the union really became a lot more disjointed. The leadership wasn’t very strong and they did not understand that their job to work together with the league to try to improve the quality of the whole business of basketball. And so we saw there was seeds that the union couldn’t really protect the players interests and that it’d be very difficult to make a deal. St. Andrew's Episcopal School

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CP: And then when you were working with Michael Jordan, was it really difficult to get him though this time? Was it harder on him since he was a major athlete?

DF: Yeah, it was actually the hardest because the players lost forty percent of their paychecks in 1998. The hardest part that was on though was because was both the president of the union and the highest paid player in the league, so he lost like seven million dollars. But all of our star clients Michael, Patrick Ewing, and Alonzo

Morning. They all got very very actively involved on like today’s stars, Who’d been largely uninvolved. They really rolled up their sleeves and took a very active role because they had the stature to make an impact with the owners.

CP: Alright, and how did you start working with Michael Jordan?

DF: All of our clients, back from the old days, we signed because we were referred to them. His college coach Dean Smith had had a lot of experience working with our firm.

We represented James Worthy before him who was the number one pick.

[Five Minutes]

DF: and Phil Ford who was the national player of the year. And we had a very strong track record with the University of North Carolina basketball program so coach Smith recommended us to Michael. St. Andrew's Episcopal School

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CP: And he wasn’t already as big as he is now?

DF: No, not nearly. He actually wasn’t even the first pick in the draft. He was the third pick in the draft in 1984, but he was the national player of the year.

CP: Uh-huh. And what was your role in his career?

DF: We first started, the gentleman that I worked for, Donald Dell, actually was probably the principal reason he signed because he had a good relationship with the coach, but once we got started after Michael’s first deal, virtually every deal he did I did, my job was to be his personal manager, his lawyer, his agent, his marketing advisor. It was a very amazing experience when I was only 33 years old. Just sort of the beginning part of my career was very challenging.

CP: And what were your actions when your first learned about the lockouts?

DF: Well, I wasn’t surprised. We had advised the players that you were in kind of a situation where you had to be prepared to make the best of it you can at the time or be prepared to sit the whole year out

CP: Uh-huh.

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DF: because you were dealing with a multi-million dollar industry this wasn’t like a game. This wasn’t like a good game of dare. You had to be prepared and we knew the league was very serious and we didn’t think the players understood the stakes that were involved. And so that was our advice, but unfortunately no one listened.

CP: What do you think the major differences were between the 1995 and 1998 lockouts?

DF: Well there was no lockout in í95.

CP: Well the games weren’t cancelled.

DF: Right, I mean I think what was happening was that a lot of players were concerned that the agents that were, like myself, that were promoting a certain course of action had an agenda different than the players, which is very silly because the agents are paid a percentage of what the players make. So if the players make more money, the agents make more money, if the players lose money, the agents lose money. The agents are sort of like a minority partner in the business with the players, but some of the players had been told by the people around them that the agents had a different agenda than the players. So what happened was, instead of having the owners and the players sort of squaring off, we really had the owners in one group, the players in one group, and the agents in the third group, which was crazy.

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CP: Uh-huh.

DF: It was like fighting a war on two different fronts so there was a lot of misinformation floating around.

CP: Wow, What was a typical day like during a lockout?

DF: Well, in the early ones in í95, the first one, we were actually trying to get the union to decertify, which means that they would agree that they wouldn’t represent the players and collective bargaining. Each player could individually negotiate his own rights. And ironically, that’s what the Nation Football Player’s Union did to successfully negotiate their last two deals. They decertified voluntarily. And when we recommended that, it’s a very natural course of action when you’re in that kind of a situation, they accused us of being anti-union. [laughs] And so we actually the first time, in í95 were trying to convince the players to sign petitions, you had to have a certain amount of votes to decertify the union. We weren’t able to get as many as we needed. We had a poll in place here in Washington D.C., there was one in New York. We were literally standing outside, you know, talking to the players where they went in just like an election, like a politician trying to convince someone to vote for him. We were trying to convince them to do that.

During the í98 lockout, everything was really shut down. It was just an amazing period.

No one had ever experienced anything like that in professional basketball.

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CP: How do you compare it to the lockout that just recently happened?

DF: Well I think when you make a mistake in life hopefully you learn from the mistake.

I think í98 was a disastrous mistake. And so when this one came, we sort of advised the same thing. You either the best that you can in July or be prepared to sit the year out.

Because the league compromised in 1998, they actually made a deal in January of 1999, they played a fifty game season.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: The players always believed at the end of the day the owners would relent and let them come back which in fact they did.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: And because of that I don’t think that either side got a very good deal.

[10 minutes]

DF: The players didn’t really negotiate for the things they should have because they thought at the end of the day they thought they’d get let off the hook, and the owners who went that far down the road didn’t really get what they needed to start the lockout, so I St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 23 think both sides lost.

CP: How about recently, who do you think got the better end of the deal?

DF: Well, I would say that based on what the owners asked for at the beginning, which was thirty-seven percent of the revenues, a hard cap, no guarantee contacts, and they ended up at fifty percent of guaranteed contracts, I think the players did better than I would have expected. The players hoped to keep the system the way it was, which was fifty-seven percent, so they gave up seven percent of fifty-seven which is about eleven percent. I think relatively speaking the players probably did better than I thought they would have. But I think because the public is so fed up with losing the games and having billionaires argue about how to split the revenues. I don’t think there’s an age and a time in America unlike í98 where unemployment merges over ten percent. Fifty percent of

America are under the poverty line, we’re having a sovereign ebt crisis in Europe, we’re on the cusp of another recession in America. I don’t think anybody has any sympathy for guys who are making five to ten million dollars a year who thought that they were, you know, being cheated.

CP: And when you were in the meetings, what were they like?

DF: You know just for me, it’s mostly about trying to educate your clients so they can understand what the issues are. These are issues that people like me deal with every day, St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 24 or your dad whose a financial advisor. But the average player has no, not that they don’t understand, they have no familiarity with what’s going on, so you’re trying to educate them to understand what each side needs to make the deal so they can make an intelligent decision when the votes come up. I’d say we spend most of the time educating our clients and then a small amount of time I would deal with both the people on the league side and the people on the players side, trying to come up with creative compromises to end the lockout.

CP: In my research, it said you were criticized during the 1995 lockout, but praised during the lockout of 1998. Do you know why that is?

DF: Yeah, I think that in 1995 people didn’t understand why we were proposing that the union decertify. And as I say, just like in sports, if you’re playing basketball and you get into foul trouble, coaches put the team into zone, that’s a normal reaction when you get in foul trouble.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: In labor law, when you’re having a collective bargaining situation and the union is weak, and they don’t have a strong position against management, the classic response is to decertify the union, which is what we proposed. And because the players weren’t sophisticated and the union leadership was terrible in 1995, they took it as an attack on St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 25 the union as opposed to a strategy to protect the players. You know in 1998, because we had all our clients and the stories help with educating the players, I think it was received much better.

CP: And how do you think the NBA lockouts could have been prevented? Do you think they could have?

DF: Absolutely. I think that it was really important down on both sides. It was a lack of trust. Each side thought the other was either asking too much and or offering too little. At the end of they day, if you think about it, they ended up at fifty-fifty, which is a classic compromise, you know, each side getting half. I think they could’ve made that deal earlier on. It’s a lesson that in a negotiation, one side’s trying to get certain things, it doesn’t have to be adversarial, it could be a partnership kind of a situation where you realize at the end of the day that the public trust in the game, the faith of the fans, is the most important thing. Arguing over, you know, a few million dollars here and there, at the end of the day if the fans don’t come to watch it, then it really doesn’t matter.

CP: And what was the general reaction of the fans when the lockouts occurred? Did they get angry?

DF: I think they were very angry in ‘98.

CP: Uh-huh. St. Andrew's Episcopal School

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DF: Because the business was going very well in ‘98. The economy in America was doing very well, and it seemed like on both sides, there was a bunch of greedy billionaires arguing with a bunch of greedy millionaires. In the current one, I think the economic climate was much different and approximately 22 of the 30 teams were losing money.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: So, I think while it was certain minor level of sympathy for the owners, I think that most people were very apathetic and they were more worried about losing their own jobs and having enough money to come take their families to the games than they were worried about, you know, how these (rich cats) were going to split the pot.

[15 minutes]

CP: What were your feelings when the lockouts came to an end?

DF: I was relieved because I think that the damage it does both economically to the players and the teams and more importantly to the perception of the game by the fans.

You know, ironically, there was a lockout in football that was three or four months earlier than basketball. And once they saw their differences, and started the season on time, it put tremendous pressure on basketball to do the same.

CP: Okay, and Historian Ron Dicker says that fans have a short-term memory and easily St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 27 forget the lockouts after they happen. Do you think this is true?

DF: I think it really depends on the sport.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: You know I think that in a sport like football, which has sort of become America’s game, I think that the fans are so eager to get back. I think that in a sport like basketball, if you push it too far down the road, I think a lot of fans, casual fans, won’t come back. I think fans have short memories. I think rabid fans will come back. You know, people who go to a lot of games. But people who are casual fans, you can lose those. For a lot of teams, it might be that there is too many more that are losing. Between winning many and losing many, that’s where you get those casual fans.

CP: So when the NBA started to play again do you think there were more people than there had been before?

DF: Actually, the ratings had been pretty good. The problem was that they compressed the season into such a short period of time. There were so many games. I mean, some teams would play eight games in nine days and the players don’t play up to the highest level of performance because they’re tired and the travel. I think the fans get irritated.

There’s so many games that it doesn’t feel like each game matters that much. Long term I St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 28 think the attendance suffered.

CP: How do you think the NBA lockouts (clears throat and laughs) affected the NBA even after they were over?

DF: Well I think it puts tremendous pressure on the league to bring the fans back. To sort of, I’m going to say, apologize, to cater to the fans, a lot of the teams lowered the ticket prices or froze the ticket prices so they didn’t increase. Like here in Washington for example, my seats are kept the same price for the next three years, which is a way of the team to say hey, we’re sorry. Please come back. I think they’re having PR programs, public relations programs for the players to appeal to the fans. They know they have an important job to do to bring the fans back because the fans were upset that they lost the opportunity to watch the games.

CP: What’s your role in the NBA now?

DF: Well it’s a lot different because I have fewer clients and fewer stars, but I look at myself sort of like at the senior stage because I’ve been doing this for thirty years.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: I think I have a lot of experience with the way for negotiations and understanding the St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 29 people. I try to be sort of a behind-the-scenes bridge to create ideas to try to resolve some of the differences.

CP: You no longer work for Michael Jordan?

DF: Yes, the rules that license the agents don’t allow agents to work for both the owners and players and when Michael became an owner I had a choice of either working for him and not representing my clients not doing both and I wanted to continue doing what I was doing. So our relationship now is social.

CP: (laughs) How has working with Michael Jordan and the lockouts shaped your career?

DF: I mean, I’ve learned a great deal from working with Michael. He’s a bright, talented individual. You watch someone who’s the best in the world at what they do, how they prepare, how they practice, how they mentally approach the game, how they maintain their motivation, are all great lessons for anyone in business to see that up close and personal. It’s a life-changing experience for me. You know, on the flipside, I think that at a young age I had the chance to try to teach him sort of the fundamentals of business.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: You know, things to look for, deals, how to approach decisions, to make good St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 30 business decisions, so it was a very rewarding experience. You know, I think that anyone in the world obviously would love to have a chance to work for someone who is the best at what they do. You know, something I’m very proud of, the work that I did, the barriers that we broke to enable him to get to where he was, and the first probably five or six years of his career he had his own line of shoes, and make movies, own restaurants, to break all the barriers was a tremendous feeling of accomplishment.

CP: Do you have any different plans for the future for your career?

DF: Yeah, I mean right now I have my own college in sports management at Syracuse, which I’ve endowed so I do some teaching, I like to try to sort of give back to the younger people what I’ve learned over a long period of time, so I’ve written a book, and

I’m doing some teaching, both at my college and my law school. I’ve started a few companies outside of sports, in the internet, a real estate company I’m about to start, but now I’m in a start-up golf company, I got involved in the start of a jet company called

Marquis Jet.

[20 minutes]

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: And so I’ve tried to use my success in sports as a springboard to sort of spread my wings and do some other things. St. Andrew's Episcopal School

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CP: And you said you’re teaching college students?

DF: Yeah.

CP: What are the classes you teach there?

DF: Well, the program is called the David B Falk College of sport and human dynamics at Syracuse.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: So I teach negotiations, marketing, I don’t do it everyday. I’m a guest lecturer.

CP: Uh-huh.

DF: So I pick up the curriculum and come up there and sort of give them the practical side of what they’re learning in the textbooks.

CP: And how often do you?

DF: I try to do it like three or four times a semester and I do it like three or four times down here at law school. And I really enjoy it because one of the great things about our business is when you spend a lot of time with young people it tends to both keep you young and engaged with things that are going on up in America. You don’t try to divorce St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 32 yourself from music or art or cultural trends that are going on. It keeps you in the flow with things that are going on in America.

CP: How do you think the NBA has shaped you as a person?

DF: I think that the kinds of players that we’ve had a chance to work for, particularly the stars, the Jordans, and the Ewings, and the Thompsons, John Thompson and Coach K, has given me an opportunity to meet people in business that most companies in America,

I’ve met a few presidents, that you’d never meet If I was practicing law, or you know, being an accountant or a business person. And I think that sitting down with those people has given me an entire education that I could’ve never gotten from going to business school.

CP: Well, thanks so much for sharing your reflections with me Mr. Falk.

DF: My pleasure.

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Time Log

Minute Mark:

5 Talking about how he got to work with Michael Jordan

10 Talking about the bad deals in the lockout

15 Talking about the fans’ reactions to the lockouts

20 Talking about his accomplishments

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Interview Analysis

Reflecting on the significance of having an agent during the NBA lockout, David

Falk states, "You had to be prepared to make the best of it you can at the time or be prepared to sit the whole year out because you were dealing with a multi-million dollar industry, this wasn't like a game." (Polk 6); by interviewing Mr. Falk I was able to obtain the unique perspective of one person directly involved in the historical NBA lockouts.

This is one of the many instances where Falk makes it clear that the lockouts of 1995 and

1998 were strenuous times in NBA history. An athlete during this time period needed to be educated on how to pull through the lockouts while protecting their career, which was a very tough task if one did not have an agent. Although the NBA lockouts are similar in structure, the players and owners still can not come to an agreement on salaries. Falk shows that there are many differences between the lockouts in the 1990s and the lockout that just happened in 2011. While some may argue that the lockouts are a repeated mistake within history, Falk displays many details to the times that prove otherwise. It is ironic that he has done this because when asked if the lockouts could have been prevented he states, “At the end of they day, if you think about it, they ended up at fifty- fifty, which is a classic compromise, you know, each side getting half. I think they could’ve made that deal earlier on. It’s a lesson that in a negotiation, one side’s trying to get certain things; it doesn’t have to be adversarial, it could be a partnership kind of a situation where you realize at the end of the day that the public trust in the game, the faith of the fans, is the most important thing.” (Polk 11) Because the NBA lockouts are unique,

Falk’s simple solution may not work for all of them and then history will repeat itself. St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 35

The interview with Mr. Falk proves the historians are correct when they say, “History repeats itself.” As a result of the interview with Mr. Falk , one can understand that different situations resulted in the same problem, meaning that even distinct events can form a similar historical pattern.

David Falk’s oral history began in Long Island, New York. He talked about how sheltered his childhood was, but this did not keep him from success. On the contrary, living a sheltered life made Mr. Falk dream big. Both he and his family had big plans for him, such as to be a Supreme Court justice. He describes how he basically had it figured out at a young age because he loved the idea of working with the law and he also loved sports. When he was old enough, he could combine these two things to start a successful career for himself. From there, Falk used his connections through small law firms to continue on from job to job. He said, “I just networked a lot of people and tried to meet as many people as I could sort of in the sports management industry, it was an infancy at the time.” (Polk 3)

Falk then began to discuss the instability of the NBA Union and the lockouts of

1995 and 1998. He describes how difficult it was on the superstar players because they received the most pay but this means that they also took the biggest hit when salaries were cut short. He cites Patrick Ewing as an example. Falk said, “The hardest part that was on though was Patrick Ewing because was both the president of the union and the highest paid player in the league, so he lost like seven million dollars.” (Polk 4)

Afterwards, he discussed the aftermath of the lockouts and how they could have been prevented. Falk holds a strong belief that an easy compromise could’ve been reached St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 36 before the lockouts had even begun if each side was not so stubborn. He shows that he believes that the argument is not worth it if the fans are being lost as well. He states,

“Arguing over, you know, a few million dollars here and there, at the end of the day if the fans don’t come to watch it, then it really doesn’t matter.” (Polk 11) When faced with the flak from critics, Falk describes how the agents are seen as the bad guys during the lockouts because people assume they are trying to manipulate their clients. Falk said,

“And because the players weren’t sophisticated and the union leadership was terrible in

1995, they took it as an attack on the union as opposed to a strategy to protect the players.” (Polk 10) Finally, Falk talks about how working with someone who is the best at what they do, in this case Michael Jordan, is an experience that you cannot learn about in school, he says, “It’s a life-changing experience for me.” (Polk 15)

Throughout the interview, Falk responds to the criticism he receives from different people within the NBA. He shows that he is seen as manipulative and as an attacker for his clients because of his decision to decertify the union, meaning that the players can make their own decisions. He says, “And when we recommended that, it’s a very natural course of action when you’re in that kind of a situation, they accused us of being anti-union.” (Polk 7) Falk has two main rebuttals for this accusation. First, an agent would not do anything to hurt their client’s career because that means that theirs is being affected as well. If the players make money, the agents make money. If the players lose money, the agents lose money. Falk describes this when he says; “The agents are sort of like a minority partner in the business with the players.” (Polk 6) Falk proves agents have good intentions when they want to decertify the union. He explains that it is the natural St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Polk 37 thing to do when the union is weak and bringing instability to the players. He states,

“When you’re having a collective bargaining situation and the union is weak, and they do not have a strong position against management, the classic response is to decertify the union, which is what we proposed.” (Polk 10) Protecting the NBA players from an incapable union does not make the agents anti-union; it just means they are looking out for their clients’ best interests.

Mr. Falk’s informative testimony demonstrates the importance of oral history, because it gives insight that allows the interviewer to see an agent’s point of view.

Through completing this interview, I have learned of a personal experience with the NBA lockouts and more about who influenced it and was influenced by it. Mr. Falk provided information that I had not encountered in my research, which broadened my understanding. The experience of doing research on the lockouts and backing it up with a personal story was rewarding. I believe this project has contented my inquisitiveness on the impact of the lockouts on the NBA.

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Works Consulted

Anderson, Dave. The Story of Basketball. New York: Beech Tree Paperback Book, 1994.

Print.

Bukszpan, Daniel. "News Headlines." CNBC Mobile Home. NBC Universal, 2011. Web.

15 Dec. 2011.

and_Strikes>.

Dicker, Ron. "NBA Fans Have Short Memory, Expect League Business As Usual."

Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post, 2011.

Web. 15 Dec. 2011.

fans_n_1118430.html>.

Falk, David. The Bald Truth: Secrets of Success from the Locker Room to the

Boardroom. New York: Pocket, 2009. Print.

Jordan, Michael, and Mark Vancil. I Can't Accept Not Trying: Michael Jordan on the

Pursuit of Excellence. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994. Print.

Lafeber, Walter. Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism. New York: W.W.

Norton &, 1999. Print.

Meyer, Ray. Basketball as Coached by Ray Meyer. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,

1967. Print.

Polk, Cheyenne. Interview with David Falk. 22 January 2012.

Syracuse University. "Founder and CEO, F.A.M.E." Suindcgiving.syr.edu. Web. 12 Feb.

2012. .