Homecoming: Juwan Howard brings NBA swagger to Michigan

by Martin Kaufmann

Even before he played his first NBA game, Jim Jackson realized that he had to begin preparing for life after basketball.

Jackson was the fourth pick in the 1992 NBA draft after an All-American career at Ohio State. But he only played 28 games his first season with the Dallas Mavericks because of a contract dispute.

“I had already started a (long-term) game plan,” Jackson said. “It really started my first year when I had to sit out. That gave me insight into the way the business works. And then in my third year when I sprained my ankle really bad, (I realized) this thing can be over in a heartbeat, so you have to prepare yourself.”

Through his first four seasons, Jackson was a fixture in the Mavericks’ starting lineup and a reliable scorer, peaking at 25.7 points per game in that injury-plagued third season. During the 1996-97 season, however, he was traded to the New Jersey Nets, beginning an odyssey that came to define his career. Over 14 seasons, he played for an NBA-record 12 teams. Only three other players have played for as many teams.

That’s a mixed blessing for an athlete. Jackson lamented never being able “to establish a camaraderie, a legacy with one team. That’s what you search for when you’re a player.” He would have loved to have become a Dallas institution, such as Dirk Nowitzki, who just retired after 21 seasons. But there might have been some benefits to his itinerant career. He lived all around the country, developing friendships he never would have made had he stayed in one city. “That can benefit you later in life,” he said.

After 14 seasons, and his playing time dwindling with the Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers, Jackson knew it was time to move on.

“I just wasn’t the type who wanted to be the 12th man on the bench,” Jackson said. “After the 2006 season, I said, ‘I’m just tired of it. I just want to move on with my life.’”

He already had interests in real estate and restaurants through business partners in Dallas, but he balked when his agent, Mark Termini, suggested that he consider moving into broadcasting. Termini finally convinced Jackson to meet with broadcasting agent Maury Gostfrand, who in 2007 steered him toward the Big Ten Network. Jackson spent eight years there, overlapping with son Traevon’s playing career at Wisconsin.

Jackson attacked broadcasting much the way he used to game-plan for an opponent during his playing career. He leaned on his Ohio State network, seeking advice from CBS’ Clark Kellogg and ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit. He also hired a coach and pored over video of his on-air appearances.

“You’ve got to work. It’s just like watching game tapes,” he said. “You break it down and point out things I’ve done wrong — maybe eye contact, verbiage, maybe slowing down my cadence. It’s a lot of stuff that you might not be aware of ... You have to be honest with yourself. You also have to watch the ones who do it the best. I think that’s the best teaching tool.”

His workload has mushroomed since 2015, when he jumped to Fox Sports 1, where he maintains a busy schedule calling college games. During March Madness, he called televised games for Turner Sports during the early rounds, then moved over to the radio side for Westwood One at the Final Four.

“I love the live games the best,” he said. “There’s nothing like being in the action.”

When he’s not on the road, you often can find him in Fox Sports’ studios, swapping hot takes on LeBron James and NBA life on shows such as “Speak for Yourself” and “Undisputed.” Occasionally some of those contacts he made during his playing career float back into his life.

In December, John Calipari, who coached Jackson when he played for the New Jersey Nets in the mid-1990s, asked his former player to speak to his Kentucky Wildcats when they visited New York. (Jackson joked that when college coaches ask him to talk to their players, “they have to prep the team, because they don’t know who I am.”)

 Jackson urged the players to spend more time focusing on their defense and rebounding rather than obsessing over their offense; if they did that, he said, the points would flow naturally.

“Ride the wave,” he told the Wildcats. “I was fortunate to play 14 years. You’re going to go through this (moving his hand through the air like waves on an ocean). It’s a microcosm of life. But how you handle it, what your outlook is, how you choose to deal with it, is going to determine how you get through it.”

Jackson has practiced what he preaches over the past 12 years. Broadcasting became his new passion, and he never took it for granted. To this day, he said, he still seeks advice from experts to help him improve.

“The same tools you used to become a successful basketball player — the work ethic, the studying, the attention to detail, listening, taking advice — are the same tools you’ll need when you move to that third phase (post-NBA) of your life,” Jackson said.

Jerome Williams, known to many as the Junk Yard Dog, earned his nickname during his stint with the Detroit Pistons. His teammates coined him ‘JYD’ for his hard work ethic and willingness to do a lot of the “garbage” jobs, such as rebounding, playing defense, setting strong screens and the other basic fundamentals. Since the conclusion of his playing career, Jerome has used that same mentality to promote the importance of education to the country’s youth via his Shooting for Peace program.

Williams, who initially began his own service project called Jerome’s Youth Development (JYD) Project, has long been an advocate for helping young people reach their highest potential. After starting the National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA) Las Vegas chapter and outreach to the local community, Williams immediately saw the parallels between the NBRPA’s community initiatives and those of the JYD Project, and decided to pair the two together. Today, that marriage is known as Shooting for Peace.

“The efforts on both sides were focused on professional and retired athletes going out and serving the community,” said Williams. “Because doing so really requires a brigade of players, I knew it was the perfect time to bridge the two initiatives. The result is a program that serves a multitude of young people in a significant way.”

Shooting for Peace has since grown into a nationwide tour and includes several different facets that aid students. Benefits include digital education services, scholarships from notable HBCUs, and school visits from the Legends themselves, which include a Q&A panel, poetry and essay contest, and a game pitting the Legends against the school team. Last year, NBA Legends made stops in various chapter cities, including Las Vegas, Boston, Harlem, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Toronto, Miami, Oakland, and more.

It is no secret that students who go on to earn a college degree are more likely to lead productive lives in society. Jerome Williams is no stranger to this fact. He has worked harder than most to achieve his dreams. In fact, Jerome paid his own tuition at a junior college to earn his Associate’s degree. He went on to receive a full scholarship from Georgetown University, as well as several other certifications in his professional life. His passion for this work is clear and reflective of his own personal values.

“I believe that kids today need their education now more than ever,” says Williams. “We take great pride in showing them how the Legends of the game and a good education work hand-in-hand.”

Local chapters encourage all members — from the NBA to WNBA to the Harlem Globetrotters — to get involved with Shooting for Peace. No matter what their professional playing careers looked like, each and every one of them started at the same place: school. All of these stories, especially those that include hardship, are necessary for students to hear.

“By hearing directly from Legends, these young people learn that while they can be an athlete, it is being a student-athlete that is really most important for lifelong success.”

A special thanks to all of the chapter presidents for their leadership with Shooting for Peace. This program would not be what it is today without them.

Husband. Father. Mentor. Investor. These are just some of the many words that describe eight-year NBA veteran Eddie Gill. But before his basketball career took him all across the globe, he was just a kid from Aurora, Colorado who went on to overcome immense odds to realize his dream of playing in the NBA.

After high school, Gill enrolled at the College of Eastern Utah, where he played minimal minutes and was given few opportunities. The decision to transfer the following season to Salt Lake Community College proved to be a game-changer for Gill. He would go on to average more than 16 points and six assists per game.

After a standout season, Gill tested his skills at the D-1 level. He transferred to Weber State in 1998 and went on to play two full seasons for the Wildcats. MVP of the 1999 Big Sky Conference Tournament and named to the First-Team All-Big Sky Conference, Gill leveraged his college successes into a career in the NBA G League and eight seasons in the NBA, and spent significant time overseas for teams in the Greek Leagues and Continental Basketball Association. But, after a career spanning the globe, he still felt most at home in Indiana.

“When I knew retirement was a real possibility, I asked myself ‘what’s next?’” Gill said.

Gill turned in his jersey in 2011 but couldn’t stay away from the game for long. He started a youth skills development program in Indianapolis called, “All Out Training”. Through the program, he led after-school initiatives for kids that focused primarily on exercise and training.

“The NBA has a number of youth initiatives. Working in camps, clinics and schools,” Gill explains. “Through all these initiatives, I developed a passion for working with kids, especially on the court, regardless of their skillsets. Not everyone wants to go to the NBA — some kids just want to be able to play better on the playground! That’s why I started ‘All Out Training’.”

What Gill didn’t know at the time was that his youth training program would be an avenue for another career option. One afternoon, Gill began talking with a father of one of the boys in the program. The man had a successful career in wealth management and Gill was intrigued. Fast forward to today and Gill has been active in the financial management and investing industries for years.

“Networking is tremendous in any business,” Gill says while reflecting on his past. “It doesn’t mean you’re trying to get something out of someone, you’re just building a relationship. You never know what you could do for someone or what doors they can open for you. That’s what happened to me.”

Gill began hiring more coaches to run All Out Training while he pursued his new goal of becoming a financial advisor. He also knew that, through his time playing professional basketball, he could be a great resource for other athletes looking to do the same thing. But it wasn’t as easy as asking his new friend for a job.

“I had to do some serious studying to get certified and licensed,” he says. “To be 34 and studying ... that was a different experience than the first time around. It was hard!”

Gill worked for it and turned into an incredible success story in the process. He has moved up in the ranks as a financial advisor, while simultaneously juggling All Out Training and pregame/postgame analyst work for the Indiana Pacers.

One of the most rewarding aspects of Gill’s life is helping younger players through the process. The biggest piece of advice he offers to current players is that basketball won’t last forever. Even if you have a great playing career, 15 years or so is still a short amount of time to make a lot of money. And then what? If you stop playing at 35 years old, then you still have 65 years of life left.

“Plan for your future,” he says. “Don’t just save, but think about what you want the rest of your life to look like. Your community involvement. Your next career. Think about it now.”

Gill’s final piece of advice? Get out of your comfort zone, and never be the smartest person in the room. “When we’re comfortable, we’re not making progress. In order to be a better basketball player, we had to be uncomfortable; the same holds true beyond the court. Surround yourself with high achievers, and don’t be the smartest person

by John Fawaz

Haywood v. NBA. 1971. For a time it seemed more like Spencer Haywood against the world.

Booed in every arena but his own in Seattle. Protests filed by numerous NBA teams, including one by a franchise that had tried to sign Haywood. Sued by the ABA. Injunctions served during warmups. The Cincinnati Royals kicked him out of the arena, and into the snow. Opposing players delivering elbows to Haywood’s jaw. And those were the polite objections.

“There were some serious threats,” Haywood says. “Booing was ‘nice.’ People would try to entice me to fight because if I punched somebody, the whole case would blow over.”

The controversy entered the realm of farce when Chicago, after losing to Seattle, demanded $600,000 for the diminution of the Bulls’ playoff chances and for the injury to All-Star Chet Walker. Imagine how much money the Bulls would have asked for if Haywood had actually checked into the game.

Haywood’s offense? He wanted to play in the NBA, and he didn’t want to wait until he was 22 years old, as the League required.

“The NBA was not accepting of the idea,” Haywood says, putting it mildly. “They said you have to wait two years [or] you can go play in Belgium.”

An unstoppable 6-foot-8 forward with a unique skill set, Haywood led the U.S. team to the gold medal at the 1968 Olympics at the age of 19, and then averaged 32 points and 22 rebounds per game in the 1968-69 season while playing for the University of Detroit. For Haywood, the youngest of 10 children of a single mother worn down from a lifetime working in the Mississippi cotton fields, college was a luxury he just couldn’t afford.

Haywood went to the ABA, which enacted a hardship exception in its bylaws that allowed its teams to sign players who hadn’t completed their college eligibility. Hysteria ensued. The end of civilization was near, so it was said, or at the very least the end of college athletics. All censure, of course, was couched in terms of concern for Haywood and other student-athletes.

The ABA proved to be no friend, either. After Haywood won the 1969-70 ABA MVP Award as a rookie, the Denver Rockets gave him a new contract worth $1.9 million. Or so they said.

“I signed it without legal counsel,” Haywood says. “I got a raise from $50,000 to $75,000, and they would put $10,000 a year into the stock market, and when I get to age 55, I start drawing from that money if it’s there.

“And the agreement inside the agreement said that I would have to be employed by the truck line that owned the Rockets until I was 70 years old.”

Haywood hired an agent (Al Ross), and when he and Ross tried to renegotiate a clearly unfair contract, the Rockets’ owner told them to get out (peppered with a racial slur). Play for Denver or don’t play at all because the NBA won’t touch you.

Enter Sam Schulman, a lawyer and the outspoken managing partner of the Seattle SuperSonics. NBA Commissioner J. Walter Kennedy warned Schulman to steer clear of Haywood. But he couldn’t. Schulman wound up signing Haywood in December of 1970.

“Sam said, ‘I will give you the same contract you signed in Denver, but all in cash,’” Haywood says. “I got money, and I can play. I will do whatever Sam wants.”

The courts agreed. U.S. District Judge Warren Ferguson issued a preliminary injunction allowing Haywood to play for the Sonics. The NBA appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the injunction in a 7-2 decision on March 1, 1971. Fewer than two weeks later, Ferguson granted Haywood’s motion for a summary judgment declaring the NBA rule invalid because it violated antitrust law.

As Schulman said later, “It was a matter of principle. I couldn’t see any logical reason for keeping a man from making a living.”

And the sky did not fall. In the decades that followed, veteran players did not lose their jobs to younger, cheaper players. The opposite occurred, as the influx of talent allowed the NBA to expand. College basketball became bigger than ever. In the NBA, revenue soared. All those extra years created tremendous wealth for NBA players and, more importantly, gave them more control over their lives and careers. Haywood v. NBA ended a system that benefited everyone but the players.

Haywood, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015, is proud of his role as a Pioneer. But as he said in his induction speech, “Now remember guys, I had game. It’s not like I just did this Supreme Court thing. I had some serious game.”

by Sam Smith

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

—— Abigail Adams’ letter and reminder to John Adams of the Continental Congress on eve of American Revolution, 1776.

It was certainly revolutionary in 1997 when the National Basketball Association committed to advancing the women’s game. Sure, there had been basketball leagues for women, and the college space was vibrant with famous programs like Immaculata and Delta State. Women played in the Olympics as an official sport in 1976 after the Title IX law in 1972, and many found participation outlets in Europe and Asia. But there seemed no sustainability in the United States, the birthplace of basketball, the land of the free and the home of the brave and where all men — and women — were supposedly created equal.

David Stern and the NBA were determined to finally remedy the great inequality with a commitment that today makes the Women’s National Basketball Association the most stable and successful women’s professional sports league in the United States. The fact that the change comes under the aegis of the National Basketball Association is both predictable and appropriate. As many will recall, it was the NBA that first introduced all-African-American starting lineups to professional sports along with African-American management and ownership, easily making it the most progressive sports league in the world.

“The WNBA has been a change agent,” agrees Carol Blazejowski, basketball Hall of Famer and former NBA official. “It’s changed a lot of societal views. It has become a platform for women to feel a sense of pride and upward mobility, and to feel that they can achieve bigger and better things in the sports community, to be viewed as athletes and not separated as women or men. It has allowed us as individuals who are very capable of playing the game of basketball to serve as role models, and to offer all we can to the sports landscape.”

 “There have been some bumps, some successes and failures,” continues Blazejowski. “It’s still going to take some time and patience. Society always accepted the male athlete, and it was a struggle [to be accepted] when I played. But that stigma has changed and it’s a rite of passage now, understanding that opportunities in sports are as important to your daughter as much as to your son for so many reasons — the chance to earn a scholarship, boosting self-esteem, and everything else that comes with playing sports.”

Tamika Catchings, a 15-year WNBA veteran who is now an Indiana Fever executive, figured she would follow her father and play in the NBA.

“Watching my father play (for four NBA teams) sparked interest in me being a professional basketball player and wanting to play in the NBA,” Catchings admitted. “We didn’t have the WNBA at that time. This is the generation that has grown up having an opportunity to be a part of something that is so much bigger than them, a league designed specifically for us. My goal was to be in the NBA, to follow in his footsteps. That really was the only thing I knew about. I didn’t even really understand the fact that women didn’t play. We had Annie Meyers and Lynette Woodard and the Harlem Globetrotters. I felt my dad did it, so I could do what my dad did.”

There are three- and four-sport athletes, and then there’s Ann Meyers, a seven-sport athlete in high school and the first female scholarship athlete at UCLA. Meyers actually did play in the NBA, albeit in preseason with the Indiana Pacers.

“I wouldn’t have done it if they were not serious,” Meyers says. “Yes, publicity was involved. But my whole intention in life was why was this any different? I like to think (I got close).”

Forget the glass ceiling; what needed to be shattered was the barrier to that glass backboard.

“We had actually commissioned a study some years earlier about what might be possible with respect to women’s basketball,” Stern said in an interview for the Retired Players’ Association. “I thought the time to do it would be in 1992 coming out of the Olympics, especially if the Americans won the gold. But they didn’t. They finished third and got bronze and it sort of went on the back burner.”

“Val Ackerman was working in our office and was a fiery advocate, as was Carol Blazejowski, and gradually (with Adam Silver) we began to develop a plan and we said, ‘OK, we could do this. We’ll do it coming out of the Olympics in ’96.”

Thanks to advocates like Ackerman and Blazejowski, the setback didn’t stop the birth of the new league.

“Val was totally intent on making it a dignified and authentic basketball experience,” Stern recalled. “The only thing I remember putting my foot down on was the ball. We agreed generally it would be smaller, but went back and forth on the color. I said if you never want to sell a WNBA ball, make it the same color as the NBA ball. We went with the oatmeal and orange, which has become a symbol of the league.”

Though the league is still not where it needs to be economically, there is no denying the quality of play is far better than anywhere in the world. It’s difficult to watch a WNBA game and then wonder why NBA players don’t consistently compete as intensely.

“Watching it is quite extraordinary,” says Stern, who still is active on several major U.S. boards and business ventures. “I remember when we started off and said this is the best women’s basketball in the world. But I would say the game is a factor of three times better.”

“We didn’t even know that some of these women existed because they were playing in countries you didn’t even know had basketball,” Stern added. “And so as it continues to grow, there will be increased revenues, salaries will be increased and from outside I would love to see these salaries and the revenue supporting a salary structure that allows WNBA players to play only for their team and not have to go to a foreign country to earn a maximum amount of money. But they only go there to earn that because they are WNBA players. They get their fame, reputation and celebrity from playing in the WNBA.”

WNBA players make about 20 percent of the NBA minimum salary in a league, of course, that generates substantially less revenue. Almost two thirds of WNBA players play during the winter outside the United States. It makes for a long year and creates heightened risk of injury. Seattle Storm star and league MVP Breanna Stewart suffered a torn achilles in Russia last April just before the start of the 2019 WNBA season. There are no one-and-dones as there is a four-year college rule for eligibility with a maximum salary slightly above $100,000 with some bonuses. WNBA players opted out of their collective bargaining agreement to negotiate additional economic terms after the 2019 season.

“The reality is people misconstrue this message,” she says. “It’s not about making the exact same amount of money NBA players make, or men make in general. We simply need to open people’s eyes to the fact we spend more than half of the year thousands of miles away and we don’t want to do that. We want to be able to play in our home country, in front of our friends, in front of our family and fans and be able to make a salary that will allow us to sustain an offseason. The reality for a lot of women is it would make sense to not play in the WNBA and just have the summer off and play overseas. But then we completely eliminate the idea of having a league here if all the best players aren’t playing in it. So we have to fight and give our all and our best to try to grow this league and stay committed to what Nancy Lieberman and Carol Blazejowski and all the players who came before us did and not let that die. They worked so hard for this thing to get going. We all love this game of basketball and we would be doing them, and honestly us, a disservice.”

Comparatively speaking, the WNBA is in its infancy. Twenty-two years into the NBA, boxing and track were still more popular and lucrative sports.

 “It’s not going anyplace. It’s a smaller league and an unusual season. But as the game improved we learned a few things and that it isn’t just about mom and daughter. It is about dad and daughter and dad and son and mom and son going to enjoy a good basketball game. I’m not going to say the WNBA would have had an easy time without the NBA support because that’s not so. So it is something about which I am very proud. I think we did the right thing and we made the choices we had to make. In retrospect some might not have been the best choices, but they were the best choices made with a purpose and desire to provide a place for women to go after they finished college to move onto the next level of a great sport.”

 “Now kids are going to NBA games and seeing female referees, female executives, and they will grow up thinking it was always that way, but it wasn’t,” says Stern. “We came from a more humble place. If you want to engage the world in a single conversation, sports is the way to catalyze that conversation.”

The WNBA has come a long way, and has a long way to go, but they’ve got game.

by Sarah Mellema

25 years ago. Vin Baker, the highly prized prospect out of Hartford, was picked eighth overall in the 1993 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks. Today, the league is celebrating the legacy of this great man, his incredible career and most importantly, his rise back to the Bucks after finding himself in a low place that many wouldn’t have expected him to bounce back from.

The 6-foot-11 power forward averaged 28.3 points per game at the University of Hartford, fourth in the country, and finished with 2,238 points, a school record that still stands. During his final year, Sports Illustrated named Baker “America’s Best-Kept Secret.”

In 1993, Baker was drafted to the Bucks, and he continued to dominate. He played in four All-Star games, earned an Olympic gold medal and nearly $100 million over the course of his NBA career. But he masked one dark secret: a dependency on drugs and alcohol that eventually cost him his basketball career, his fortune and almost his life.

At first, Baker never let the alcohol interfere with his game. That lasted until around 1996 when he recorded his best game ever as a pro after smoking marijuana before the game, and he quickly convinced himself that he played better under the influence.

He was soon traded to the Seattle SuperSonics where he averaged just under 20 points per game. Not bad considering that while playing for the Sonics, Baker was drinking before, after and sometimes during games. Eventually, he was almost always drunk or hungover during games. Baker was traded to Boston, then to the Knicks, the Rockets and the Clippers. His bank account hit zero, his properties foreclosed, and by 2006, Baker was out of the NBA.

“We all eventually have that moment of truth, when it physically leaves us,” says Baker. “The fans stop cheering. The game goes away. Then we have a moment of reality about what comes next. It eventually goes away for every player. For me, that moment came abruptly. It was ‘what’s next’ before I was ready to be finished.”

His substance abuse continued after retirement as he tried to forget what might have been. Baker’s first few attempts at sobriety centered on the hope of becoming an All-Star again. He’ll tell you now that those attempts failed because he still needed to humble himself. He needed to start over from the beginning and rediscover himself, not just in his career, but in every facet of life.

“Life dealt me a hand, and I had to reinvent myself with it,” Baker says. “I went to Seminary for a few years in New York, and I was able to find comfort in religion. It was interesting being back in school. I had to sit in class and really think about who I wanted to become.”

With a newfound humility, Baker was able to put his pride aside and make a phone call that would change the direction of his life once again. His former boss, Howard Schultz, who had owned the Sonics when Baker played in Seattle, not only took his call, but he helped Baker come up with a plan. Part of that plan was for Baker to serve coffee at another business Schultz managed: Starbucks.

“From school, to seminary, to Starbucks, I was slowly reinventing who I was,” Baker explains. “My identity from college and more than a decade after was all about the game of basketball. I was forced into a place where I had to think about my life as opposed to just basketball because it was taken away from me. At some point, we all will have that. Life will deal us something, big or small, where it’s not just about basketball, and the priorities in our lives will test us. The priority for me became life, and focusing on things that I needed to improve on as a human being.

What really got him through that time was humility. Baker didn’t have any real agenda other than working on himself. He went into the management training program at Starbucks, which not only forced him to show up to work dependably, but it also meant — just like with his job in basketball — that he put on a uniform.

He was forced into a life outside of basketball, and he’ll tell you now, it was the best thing that could have happened to him.

Humbling himself enough to serve coffee to his former teammates and fans was just the beginning for Baker. He also had to regain his financial freedom, and watch every dime he spent.

“Working at Starbucks, my paychecks looked very different than with the NBA,” Baker says. “The interesting part is, I didn’t really watch my paychecks with the Sonics, but as soon as I got a $900 check a week working full-time at Starbucks, I started paying attention. I was starting over in all aspects of life, and watching every dime I spent was part of that. A $100 million lesson was a hard one to learn. But the awesome part about it? It was a lesson!”

Baker’s path back to the Bucks didn’t just end there. The NBA didn’t just “let” him back in. Even as a former All-Star and Olympian, he had to work for it, which humbled him even more. That path for him included working for FOX Sports Wisconsin, volunteer coaching, then assistant coaching with the Texas Legends of the NBA G League.

“I had to get to a humble place and find myself, and once I experienced that humility, getting back around other players was the easy part,” reflects Baker.

While he was working for the G League, Baker started to notice a different style of basketball. The game had changed in just a handful of years, but his newfound humility helped him continue to move forward.

“I had to learn the game through a different lens,” Baker explains. “Not only was the game different from my playing days, but I also had to see basketball from the perspective of a coach. I had to work hard to get to where I knew I could be, and it wasn’t easy.”

This meant setting aside his pride day after day, in big ways and small. In coaches meetings, he pays close attention because a lot has changed, and he’s ready and willing to learn from the other coaches. If a player Googles his story, he sees it as a beacon of light.

“They know the struggle I’ve overcome,” Baker says. “They see that I was an All-Star, but they also find out what I’ve been through. It’s important for me to lead by example and be the best person I can be. If I see a player struggling, it’s my duty to help him through it and tell him exactly what he needs to do on or off the court. If I’ve overcome what I’ve overcome, someone else can certainly overcome his free-throw slump. We can consistently have hope in any aspect of life.”

Baker considers it a miracle that he’s back in the NBA. He’ll tell you now that when he was serving Grandes, Talls and Ventis, he was not expecting to ever make it back. He was there to make a living. And it made him appreciate every step.

“I’m better as a person now than I was when I played in the NBA,” Baker says. “Obviously I’m not the athlete, like the kids remind me every day, but I’m better as a person. I have tremendous opportunity here. It’s incredible. Being a coach happened as soon as I realized and accepted that basketball was over for me.”

Baker has shared his story across different platforms, including writing his own book titled, “God and Starbucks.” He now lives to inspire people who may have lost a bit of life along the way.

“Life is all about lessons,” Baker shares. “Some of them are about ethics, some are big, some are large. My big life lesson hurt. It was expensive, but I learned it. Now I want to share it with other players so they don’t go down the same path. The problem isn’t when people make mistakes — it’s when we make mistakes and we don’t share our lessons. Or when we see other people making mistakes, and we’re too embarrassed to reach out and help them.

“At first, I said ‘why me?’ Now I say, ‘why not me?’ It’s my story, and it’s my duty to share it.”

by Ben Ladner

For many young National Basketball Association (NBA) players, a rookie contract represents an immediate flow of cash into bank accounts that might once have been empty. The allure of a second contract, and a third, opens up a theoretical wellspring of disposable income to be spent, lent and flaunted. But if not managed properly, that wellspring can dry up — often faster than players could have ever anticipated.

Some, however, like Caron Butler, saw those contracts as investments from day one. While many of his peers blew money on cars and clubs, he took a longer view of his career and the rest of his life. Having come into the league with two young children and a family to consider, Butler mostly eschewed night life and frivolous spending in order to take care of more important matters. “My perspective on life was just so much different,” Butler said. “Whereas guys went out and did certain things, I wasn’t trying to spend that type of capital on having fun because I was already thinking about, ‘I’ve got two mouths to feed forever, and I have to make sure they attend college.’”

During his youth in Racine, Wisconsin, Butler experienced firsthand the consequences of hanging with the wrong crowd. He began selling drugs as a teenager, had the first of five kids at the age of 14 and was arrested more than a dozen times before being incarcerated at 16. “I embraced the wrong things,” Butler said [on the Ballers With Babies podcast] in 2018. “But I was what I was exposed to.”

To position himself for a more stable future, Butler surrounded himself with people who could help him make responsible financial decisions and plan for the future when he came into the league. “I just had really smart people around me,” Butler said. “People that just exposed me to the right things and the right people.”

That group included Butler’s agent and lawyer, Raymond Brothers, his financial adviser and his business partner. They helped him maximize his earning power in the NBA and protect his money throughout his career. As a player, Butler attended financial literacy classes offered by the NBA Players Association and took advantage of relationships with active and retired players alike. Today, he’s reaping the rewards. Butler has curated a wide range of investments, including stakes in Graduate Hotels and Juice Budz, which have a combined 18 locations. Additionally, he and fellow NBA players Anthony Tolliver and Steve Blake were among the first high-profile people to invest in the social media app Arbit, and Butler invested in DeltaHawk Engines, an aircraft engine manufacturer based in Racine, last year.

Butler also remains active in both his home community in Racine and the NBA fraternity. He, Grant Hill and Jerome Williams were recently named to the NBA Retired Players Association’s Board of Directors, where Butler helps empower current players and assists them in planning for their post-playing careers. As a recently-retired, former NBA All-Star who transitioned smoothly from the court to the media, Butler is a recognizable model for players on how to remain active after retiring and a resource for players like Bradley Beal, Eric Bledsoe and Spencer Dinwiddie, who have reached out to him for advice on managing careers and their wealth after retirement. “The NBA is an amazing platform to be on,” Butler said. “But at some point, everyone will be a retired player, or an ex-player. And you have to have some type of strategic plan about how you want to exit and go on to the next phase of your life, because you will say goodbye to the game at some point.”

In today’s age of heightened player agency and athlete-controlled media endeavors, many of the NBA’s brightest stars aren’t waiting to retire before entering the media field. Players have begun exerting more influence over their perception among fans, often via independent entities that give them complete autonomy over their message. LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry all have their own media companies, while an increasing number of players are speaking through The Players’ Tribune or Uninterrupted. “Guys are starting to try to control their content as much as possible and tell their own stories,” Butler said. “I think that’s the new wave.”

Butler has joined that wave, too, getting involved in a variety of platforms and mediums to share his perspective on topics inside and outside the realm of basketball. He has worked as a sideline reporter and studio host for Turner Sports for the last two years while regularly co-hosting a radio show and a podcast. Mark Wahlberg is soon to produce a movie based on Butler’s memoir, while Butler himself is heading up a documentary titled “The Green Dream” on racial inequality in the cannabis industry and justice system. He has taken full advantage of his platform and his voice, and like so many NBA players in 2019, he’s doing it from a perspective only he has. “I think it’s important that if you’re going to tell a story,” Butler said, “you should be able to tell your story the way you want to.”

by Brad Shulkin

A true pioneer in women’s basketball, no one has had more of an impact on the women’s game than Sheryl Swoopes. Her accolades are undeniable. A dominating force throughout her entire career, Swoopes would go on to become the first woman signed to the WNBA, a three-time WNBA MVP, an Olympic gold medalist, and an NCAA and WNBA Champion.

 “When I look back on my playing career and I look at where I am today, I just remember saying, ‘Is this really happening? Is this real? Is this true?’ And as much as I was excited about it, there was a part of me that said, ‘This is going to be a challenge because now there is a lot of pressure.’”

These accomplishments for Swoopes, which helped elevate her status among the league’s best, didn’t come without incredible pressure.

“I take a lot of pride in who I am and what the WNBA represents. To be a part of the league back in 1997 and to be the first player to sign was a lot of pressure for me. But it was pressure that I welcomed because I looked at it as an opportunity to go out and really market the league and try to show people that women can really play this game.”

Since the age of seven, Swoopes’ love of basketball was overly apparent. A rising recruit out of Brownfield High School, Swoopes initially decided to attend in-state behemoth, The University of Texas. But apprehension quickly set in and Swoopes made the decision to leave the school and enroll at South Plains Community College to be closer to home. She went on to become a two-time All-American and All-Region selection at South Plains. After two successful seasons, Swoopes transferred to Texas Tech, where she went on to win an NCAA Championship in 1993. She is one of only three Lady Raiders to have her jersey retired by the team. Still to this day, Swoopes holds many school and national records, including the single game and single season scoring records. A culmination of her tremendous season at Texas Tech, Swoopes went on to be named the 1993 Naismith College Player of the Year.

After college, Swoopes turned to USA Basketball in 1994 before joining the WNBA in 1997. During the WNBA’s inaugural season, Swoopes was recruited to play for the Houston Comets. Swoopes was the first woman to be signed to a WNBA contract and right out of the gate, made her impact known. During her tenure with the team, Swoopes accumulated over 2,000 points, 500 rebounds, 300 assists and more than 200 steals. Her play made her the first three-time WNBA MVP and the first three-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year. 

“When I first started playing basketball at the age of seven, I set goals for myself and said, ‘Yes, I want to play in the Olympics. Yes, I want to meet Michael Jordan.’ And all of those things happened. And when I started playing in the WNBA, honestly I never went into the league saying I want to be MVP this many years. I want to win four championships. All I said was I wanted to be successful and, at the time, I didn’t really know what that looked like or what that meant.”

Since Swoopes joined the WNBA back in 1997, the league’s growth has been undeniable. This past season, the WNBA saw a 36-percent increase in viewership in adults age 18-49, a 29-percent jump in men in that age group and a 50 percent increase in women. But more than the growth of the viewership has been the growth of the women who play the game. What has excited Swoopes the most is seeing the current generation of players use this growing platform to influence the greater good.

“It’s so incredible to see how far the league has come. I know there is still a lot of work to do, but to see the talent level and how much these women are embracing the challenge of continuing to compete and putting the women’s game on the map. It says a lot about who they are and what they represent. I love the fact that you have younger players today that are in the league that are stepping up, not just on the court, but they are using their voices for a lot of very positive things.”

As she sits here today and reflects on what has been a truly historic career, Swoopes is left with no regrets. She put everything she had into the game she loved and is left with nothing but pride and a sense of relief when discussing her accomplishments.

“I can honestly sit here today and say I accomplished everything I ever thought I could accomplish and then some. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would have so much success on the court with basketball and that basketball would allow me to go to so many different places and meet so many incredible people and really change my life. That’s exactly what the game did for me.”

by John Fawaz

“What next?”

It’s the question asked by every professional athlete. At some point, everybody hangs ‘em up. Only then do they begin to consider the next chapter of their lives.

Jamal Mashburn had that all worked out well before he retired from the NBA in 2006. You can learn a lot riding the subway.

“I got a chance to see the train transition from blue collar, working class to white collar, business suits,” Mashburn says, remembering his days riding from his Harlem home to a Catholic school in Manhattan. “I had aspirations to find out what was in the briefcases and do that.

“Riding that train, I had to figure out how to carry that briefcase.”

Mission accomplished, although in this era the briefcase has been replaced by a smartphone. Mashburn, who turned 46 in November, has amassed a business empire that includes restaurants, auto dealerships, a marketing agency, real estate development, juice franchises and tech investments, just to name a few. He is living the life he envisioned as a youngster, well before his NBA dreams.

“I looked at basketball as a way to meet a lot of people and get an education so I can carry that briefcase,” Mashburn says. “Those train rides gave me a lot of inspiration.”

Basketball and business were “parallel dreams” and every step of his journey had to further both ambitions. Never stop learning on the court, in the classroom and, most of all, in everyday life. Never stop aspiring.

“If you’re the best player on your team, you need to find a new team,” Mashburn says. “I’m a true believer in that you grow from others’ experiences as well. Always in basketball and always in business, I’ve transitioned well because I am a constant learner.”

The subway introduced Mashburn to a different environment, but back home in Harlem he was like any other kid, playing sports with his friends. This being New York, playground basketball ruled. But Mashburn was a pudgy youngster and not the most skilled player. The only way to change that was to practice. For that he needed a ball, and the neighborhood had just one. Seriously.

“I never owned a basketball. When I was growing up in the projects in Harlem, it was more like a community basketball,” Mashburn says. “He who left last had to secure the basketball. Lights out at ten, I would always be the kid out there playing by myself.

“That’s how I honed my skills, how to bargain. I don’t think I ever gave up the basketball. I was the guy who was out there first and the one who stayed latest. I had to figure out a mechanism to keep that tool.”

By his teen years, Mashburn showed promise, though his weight remained an issue. Big for his age, he regularly played against older kids. He realized that this sport was also a business (“I had value because I could play the game”) and he asked a lot of questions. He wanted to absorb as much information as possible. Nothing has changed.

His high school years were centered on basketball. Even then, with AAU and summer camps, there wasn’t much of an offseason. But his education continued, both in a traditional and nontraditional sense. Though his parents separated when he was 11, Mashburn’s father lived nearby and they saw each other almost every day, while his mother, Helen, exposed him to a different side of New York with trips to museums, restaurants and other cultural activities. As he said, she gave him what he needed, not necessarily what he wanted.

Maybe the biggest lessons came when she took him to collect rents as part of her bookkeeping job. They discussed her work (“my mother taught me debits and credits”) and his future. She wanted Jamal to be able to tell her anything, even things she didn’t want to hear. Don’t count on a career in the NBA, she cautioned. Get your college degree. Be ready to do something else. She needn’t have worried.

“My mother always said, ‘Have something to fall back on,” Mashburn says. “I pushed back. ‘I don’t want to fall back on something. I want to fall forward.’”

More importantly, he had no illusions about the dreams of sports glory. His father, Bobby, had been a boxer. His decade in the ring included a fight at Madison Square Garden and bouts against Larry Holmes and Ken Norton, two future heavyweight champions.

“I saw my father, and the other side of being a professional athlete and not having any fame or riches,” Mashburn says. “He never got a chance to live out his dream. I wanted to take a different direction.”

By his senior season of high school, Mashburn had dropped the pounds and became one of the city’s top players, a small forward who could knock down outside shots. College coaches, assuming that he would be leaving early for the NBA, mostly talked basketball during their recruiting pitches. Mashburn’s priorities were different. He wanted a college that was the right fit. Yes, he might leave early if it made economic sense, but he wanted a school that would help him achieve his ultimate goals. As he says, it was all part of “investing internally by making the right decisions and developing a business plan” for life, a process he began at age 13.

“I had to figure out what college I wanted to go to,” Mashburn says. “Did it match up with what I wanted to accomplish?

“A lot of coaches who were recruiting me didn’t take me seriously.”

One coach who did take Mashburn seriously was Rick Pitino, who coached at Providence before taking over the Knicks in 1987. The two had developed a rapport during summer hoops camps in New York. Before Mashburn’s senior year of high school, Pitino left the Knicks to take over at Kentucky, which was quite a distance — literally and figuratively — from Harlem. The Wildcats were on probation, so if Mashburn followed Pitino, he wouldn’t be able to play in the NCAA Tournament his first year. A program in the Atlantic Coast Conference or Big East seemed the most likely landing spot. But coach and player clicked, and Mashburn signed with Kentucky.

“He always allowed me to use my IQ, either on the court or off it,” says Mashburn. “He had an open-door policy that I used, more than others, to go in and express concepts and ideas. And he promised he would tell me when it was time to leave [for the NBA].”

Mashburn compiled a solid freshman season (1990-91) at Kentucky and then emerged as one of the top players in the nation in his sophomore year. He led the Wildcats to the Final Four, and nearly to the 1992 NCAA Championship Game by scoring 28 points in an NCAA Semifinal Game. But, in one of the greatest college games ever, Duke dashed Kentucky’s hopes when Christian Laettner hit a game winner at the buzzer in overtime.

After that loss, Mashburn was invited to California as part of a group of college all-stars assembled to play against the original Dream Team. When he returned from the scrimmages, Pitino called him into his office and told him it was time.

“He said, ‘This is going to be your last year here,’” Mashburn recalls.

As a junior, Mashburn was the Southeastern Conference Player of the Year, and he led the Wildcats to the NCAA Final Four before another overtime loss ended their title hopes. Mashburn, who had already announced his intention to turn pro, returned to the coach’s office at season’s end.

“Remember how you want to carry the briefcase?” Pitino asked. “You’re going to sit down and hire an agent and hire a business manager.”

So began the interview process. First, Mashburn chose an agent after speaking with several candidates. Then it was time to select a business manager, but that proved more difficult. They offered him investment ideas and portfolio management. In other words, a life of leisure after his playing days ended.

“What happens with athletes sometimes is that people don’t think you have a vision beyond playing,” Mashburn says, recalling the process. “Only one [Rick Avare] listened to my vision of carrying the briefcase.

“I told him, ‘I want to step into a live, active business after I play in the NBA. I need you to teach me everything in finance and accounting that you know.’ Eventually he morphed into my business partner.”

Mashburn entered the 1993 NBA Draft as one of the top prospects. In those days, players who stood 6-8 and could shoot threes were rare. Dallas selected him fourth overall, after Chris Webber, Shawn Bradley and Penny Hardaway.

Mashburn averaged 19.2 points per game in 1993-94 to lead all first-year players and he finished third (behind Webber and Hardaway) in the balloting for the NBA Rookie of the Year Award. The next season, Jason Kidd joined the Mavericks, combining with Mashburn and Jim Jackson to form the “Three Js.” Dallas, which had won just 24 games combined in the previous two seasons, improved to 36-46 in 1994-95. Mashburn averaged 24.1 points per game to rank fifth in the NBA. The Mavericks future looked bright.

At the same time, Mashburn and Avare began planning for life “once the ball stopped bouncing,” as Mashburn puts it. He connected with Chris Sullivan, one of the founders of Outback Steakhouse, and used some of his shoe contract money to purchase a franchise. He would go on to acquire 38 Outback Steakhouses before selling his interest in 2018.

Mashburn describes that initial investment as the catalyst for the ventures that followed. During the next 20 years, he bought and sold fast food franchises and a printing plant, started and sold a venture capital firm, and invested in real estate and tech companies. Mashburn currently owns 90 Papa John’s franchises, three locations of a fitness company and five auto dealerships (he says he has learned the most from those businesses). He joined Jonathan Sackett to open the Mashburn Sackett advertising agency, and he is beginning to develop hotels.

While his financial endeavors flourished, he experienced ups and downs on the court. A knee injury limited Mashburn to 18 games in 1995-96 while the Three Js clashed. By 1997, all three were out of Dallas, with Mashburn going to Miami in a midseason trade.

Mashburn would play three and a half seasons (1997-2000) with the Heat and four with the Hornets (2000-02 in Charlotte and 2002-04 in New Orleans). He averaged 21.6 points per game in 2002-03 to earn All-NBA Third Team honors. But his knee, worn down by repetitive injuries, limited him to 19 games in 2003-04 and finally forced his retirement in 2006.

“It eventually stops. What do you do now?” says Mashburn, who averaged 19.1 points per game in 11 NBA seasons. “What did you learn from the experience that you can use in the new life? What don’t you need that you can get rid of?”

Mashburn applied his basketball lessons to his new life. Preparation, preparation, preparation. Don’t let the ball dribble you, you dribble the ball. As you become better as a basketball player, you become better at moving the ball.

“I’m very selective on things that I do, and I am very methodical in my approach. Very parallel in how I played,” Mashburn says. “To me, that was the secret sauce. Prepare and the game takes care of itself. Got to have good people and teammates around you. I prefer myself to be a teammate, to let other people flourish.

“I like to be around people who have lived their dream and can also express it and teach it.”

Though Mashburn made a bid for the New Orleans Hornets (now Pelicans) in 2012, owning an NBA franchise is likely not in his future. The value of franchises has soared to the point that it doesn’t make business sense (“the return is all in appreciation”). But he remains connected to the NBA and the game. Players seek him out, and he is happy to help.

“I do get approached quite a bit for information,” Mashburn says. “They ask how I did what I did and how do I continue to do it. It’s a lot of fun to share my stories.”

“When I was coming into the NBA, the League and Players Association would bring in guys who made mistakes. They would preach about ‘Don’t do this.’ I always wanted to hear the story about the guys who made the successful transition.”

For the veteran players who are pondering retirement, Mashburn reminds them that they have the tools. They just need to be repurposed.

“There’s a lot of work to be done, like the work they did to get to the NBA, but it’s more of a lifestyle change,” he says.

Meanwhile, his son, Jamal Jr., is a junior in high school and one of the top guards in the nation. Like his dad, he is eyeing a parallel track — he wants to play in the NBA and be an attorney. Soon he will have to pick a college. Those recruiters better do their homework. The Mashburns have a lot of questions.

Next up, we welcome 1982 NCAA Champion & newly elected Board Member of the National Basketball Retired Players Association Sam Perkins to the All-Access Legends Podcast for an exclusive interview in Legends Magazine. In the interview, “Sleepy Sam” as he frequently goes by, touches on his days at North Carolina, playing alongside Jordan & Worthy, his greatest achievements and his greatest story to date, how he got his nickname. All that and more on the #AALegendsPodcast.

Q: What was it like to play on the 1982 National Championship team at North Carolina and play alongside some of the greats like [Michael] Jordan and [James] Worthy?

A: “I speak about this all the time because everybody asks me about that team, everybody seems to think that, that was the greatest college team of mankind. But just being there, playing for Dean Smith and the guys you mentioned, it was an experience. We didn’t know it was an experience until after we left there, but while we were there, we had a good time. We played together with the teams that came after us. I think the best part about playing at Carolina and playing at that time was teams just kept coming after us. We had a bullseye on our back and we took that as a challenge all the time. Practices were always competitive. It was just four years of growing up and Dean Smith was one of those guys to keep us in check.”

Q: What was the greatest lesson that you learned in college?

A: “I think it’s all the lessons that I learned from Coach Smith. Coach Smith was one of the most down to earth coaches that was really concerned about his players. He recruited guys from different backgrounds and different places to mesh. And one of the things I took from that was just getting to know people that I’ve never experienced before. As it went on, I talked to a lot of guys about religion, their beliefs, why they believed in this and that. I think one of the things that coach taught me was to do something different every day or try to get to know somebody that you would never think about knowing. He had us doing reading, things of that nature, and that’s how I got more knowledgeable about people. And that’s one of the things I always liked about Dean Smith because he was so versatile in his approaches that he made you think about things. And that kind of a quality is what I take with me trying to get to know people, and always assessing things, and putting yourself in other people’s shoes and things of that nature.”

Q: So you leave North Carolina aFter four years and went on to have a 17-year career in the NBA. Going back to when you made the transition from the college ranks to the NBA, what was the greatest learning curve or challenge?

A: “Well the biggest challenge was the practices because you thought every coach was like Dean Smith. You got a wakeup call as soon as that first day came to practice. I think basically from what I tried to do in 17 years is be consistent. That was a challenge for me, to be consistent throughout my games. To try to do something that would be best for the team. And as I look back, I wish I was more aggressive in the ways of playing but you know we had guys on the team who could score, who was this and so on and so on and you were just a role player. But at the same time, I was just trying to be consistent and not worry about anything else. And that’s what I tried to do from Dallas to LA, and all the way to Indiana.”

Q: Where was your favorite place to play and why?

A: “It’s a tossup. I would have to say, because I got acclimated in Seattle, that I would say Seattle, because I was in the community doing a lot more. I was in Los Angeles and I like that team too, but I wasn’t there long enough to get acclimated. As soon as I got traded, I wanted to do a lot more things there community service wise. But I think Seattle was the one because I was there the longest. We had a group of guys that were different and I enjoyed playing with. We had great chemistry.”

Q: How did you get your nickname?

A: “So I’ll try and make it short. I was with the Lakers, and Byron Scott was always a clown. There’s always a clown on the team, so let’s say Gary Payton on Seattle, it was Mark Jackson on the Indiana Pacers, or Dale Davis. On the Lakers it was Byron Scott. He was naming everybody because Magic had a name, it was of course Magic, James had Clever, Vlade wanted to be The Magician because he wanted to pass like Magic. So here comes me, and I’m always, not lethargic, but I’m always taking my time to get places from point A to point B. Whether Point A or B is around the corner or down the street I’m the same speed. So I was late for practice, I got there later than I wanted to at the Forum. And you’re supposed to be in the circle at 9:45. If you’re not in the circle at 9:45, you get fined. So they saw me running by around 9:38 to the locker rooms, I had to pass the court to get to the locker room. I got dressed and they were betting that I was going to be late and fined. So I got dressed and it was about from 9:38 to 9:43-9:44 and I didn’t run, I was walking to the circle. I said I’m going to get there regardless, but when 9:45 came I was in that circle so Byron Scott was like, “Here comes Sam, look at him, he’s all smooth,” and next thing you know that took off like, “He’s walking smooth.” And they’re all laughing at me because here I am at 9:44, any rookie, anybody else would be breaking their neck to get to that circle, and I was just walking so casual like I had nothing to worry about. That’s how the name started, and then when I got to play for Seattle, Kevin Calabro put “Big” in front of it because I was shooting 3’s, and that’s how the name came. That’s how it all started.”

by Sam Smith

Just because things are the way they are doesn’t mean they were destined to be so.

Just because NBA players have the richest guaranteed contracts in American team sports, unlike NFL players, or have so much flexibility in their economic relationships, unlike NHL players, doesn’t also mean it was inevitable. It occurred mostly because a valiant group of determined men, the modern revolutionists of basketball as I refer to them in my new book, Hard Labor, demanded economic equality and social liberty with racial camaraderie during the most turbulent times in American society.

They were the 14 NBA players led by NBA legend Oscar Robertson, along with individual pioneers like Spencer Haywood, Gail Goodrich and Rick Barry and labor titans like Larry Fleisher, who challenged the guardians of the game, the owners of NBA teams and the league itself. These gutsy NBA guys went to court and Congress despite threats to their livelihoods. They did so for their successors knowing none of them would personally benefit from the risks they took to their own careers.

And there were consequences. Robertson lost his job as a national TV commentator for NBA games. Chet Walker felt forced into retirement after averaging 19.2 points his final season. Joe Caldwell was kicked out of basketball under the guise that he had led astray, of all people, Marvin Barnes. Not all suffered or were punished, for sure. But how was it that Oscar Robertson, one of the best minds ever to play the game, never got a coaching, advising or management chance with any team? Coincidence, probably.

Consider those times in the 1960s: NBA players had roommates and washed their own uniforms, local medical people, often veterinarians, were hired to do the pregame taping. There were 20 or more preseason games, two teams traveling together on buses barnstorming through states, playing every night for weeks. And then starting the 80-game season. Airplane travel was, of course, coach, and players would pile into a taxi to get to the game from the hotel. No team bus like today. The team would reimburse the players. Tommy Heinsohn recalls asking for, say, $3.50 and Auerbach saying it cost him $3.25 from the same hotel, so that was all Heinsohn was getting in reimbursement. Philadelphia owner Eddie Gottlieb used to hire a bus to take players to East Coast games, like in New York. He’d sell tickets to fans for the unused seats.

This was also the time of the great migration of black players to the NBA cities, the stars of the game that raised the sport with Elgin Baylor, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson. In effect, the playing field was raised as the NBA became the vertical game the public grew to love.

The 1960s reverberated with the Vietnam War and Civil Rights overshadowing most everything else. Professional athletes contending for their “rights” was hardly a subject of much sympathy. So serious sports magazines published stories of whether the game was being ruined by too many blacks. Anonymous quotes proliferated similar to when Jackie Robinson started with the Brooklyn Dodgers. These brave NBA players also would not back down.

Elgin Baylor once sat out a regular season game when he could not be served at a restaurant with teammates. And this wasn’t the 1940s. This was into the 1960s. Lenny Wilkens was starting for the St. Louis Hawks. His picture was featured with the other starters in the window of a popular restaurant across from the arena. Wilkens was not allowed to eat there with white people. The league would arrange preseason for team hotels to allow blacks, but Celtics players related how the hotel marked “c” in the register to denote “colored” and asked to split roommates because whites and blacks shouldn’t share a room. Also, so the white guests could know on which floors the black guests were staying. This was “sophisticated” Los Angeles. Black players often would use a white teammate as a beard just to get a taxi, the white guy standing outside to flag down the cab and then the black guys rushing out to get in. Yeah, you think a taxi is stopping for us? NBA players? Big deal.

There was a quota system then in which white players replaced white players and blacks replaced blacks, and that teams assigned black players to be rebounders and defenders so the team would not have to pay them as much money. After all, those “role” players scored less. It was the story of the St. Louis/Atlanta Hawks and how the appeal of Pete Maravich to the white South may have short circuited a dynasty. Dunking was at one time even banned in the NBA to level the playing field for white players.

What these players did in the Oscar Robertson suit is mostly lost to the ages, recalled like Yalta, something important, but everyone is a bit fuzzy on the details. But what the Robertson suit did was, effectively, create the modern NBA, allowing for the combination of the rival leagues with the ABA. Effectively marrying the conservative NBA with the liberal ABA, boardroom ethos merging with street ball excellence, inviting the rest of geographical America into the game with small cities from throughout the country. It was surgery that introduced a special sort of doctor, like Julius Erving. But not until NBA players themselves began an evolution to legitimate free agency and the ancillary working benefits, which translated into respect and an eventual partnership that has the NBA flourishing today like no other American sports league. Owners then, of course, screamed ruination of the sport if players could choose where they wanted to play.

Those players dragged the NBA into court and Congress, where none other than Sam Ervin of Watergate fame was astounded by the way the NBA had been doing business so inequitably. Those players led by Robertson challenged the collusion between big business and government that got the NFL a specious antitrust exemption in a back room deal with Louisiana senators in exchange for an NFL franchise, the New Orleans Saints. Long before Curt Flood was making his heroic stand at the cost of his Major League Baseball career, these NBA progressives were demanding equality in the marketplace of ideas as well as finance. Didn’t they deserve the same rights as any working American?

Like the old American Football League, the ABA came along mostly as a ploy to join the NBA. The AFL owners pulled it off with that wink deal in the U.S. Senate. The NBA owners were stanched by the Robertson group that grew from the first players’ association in sports headed by Bob Cousy and then handed off to Heinsohn and then Robertson as the NBA players’ symbol of the equality being demanded in the boardroom and playing field.

They first got the attention of the owners in a unified boycott threat of the 1964 All-Star game, the first scheduled to be nationally televised. The Lakers owner threatened to throw Baylor and Jerry West out of the league. I was able to relate those stories along with the shaky travel of the era when the NBA had its “Sully” moment of the Lakers plane with Baylor on board crash landing in a snowstorm without a scratch to anyone, along with the amazing story of the greatest sports friendship of all time, Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes, the latter a LeBron James of his era struck down in his prime. The Celtics dynasty would not have been quite so if not for Stokes’ illness.

This was a time when Wilt and Bill Russell continued their rivalry in the summers, traveling around to parks and playgrounds, literally picking sides for games. Earl Monroe almost jumped to the ABA, but when he visited the Indiana Pacers the players all were armed with pistols because they said there was so much KKK activity. Think the game is fancy now. Robertson plaintiff Archie Clark was doing crossovers, and Don Kojis the back door lob dunks in the 1960s. Russell had a famous chase down block in the Finals in the late 1950s.

Equally forgotten or unrealized is this creedal nature of sports, so dismissed with the anti-immigrant tenor of these times. Plaintiff Tom Meschery was from China and was forced to live in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. He might have been considered a chain migration and under attack now. Bob Cousy’s mother brought him to the U.S. when she was pregnant, and he spoke French much of his youth. He might have been under siege as an anchor baby. Heinsohn came from a German family and was mercilessly harassed as a “Nazi” during World War II. The father of plaintiff Bill Bradley’s wife was a Luftwaffe pilot. She became a respected author and university professor educating so many Americans. These immigrants, coming in legally or because their worlds were under siege because that’s what America stood for, became the people we learn from and cheer for.

My book, Hard Labor, wasn’t just about a tug of war for money. It is the rich and detailed story of these pioneer revolutionaries of the game and their amazingly rich era both leveling the economic field they played on and enhancing the stage where we all came to enjoy the greatest athletic performers in the world. My inspiration for the book was the plight of so many of these players from that era, who stepped forward for their peers and the game. None benefited personally from their endeavors. They just believed in fairness and a voice. My hope is the players of today, so wealthy beyond their ancestors imaginations, realize, accept and understand just how they arrived at the place where they are. Those players did step up in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement with extended medical care for all veterans, a big time first step. But there is a greater debt to repay. As the kids yell in the playground when the ball escapes to the other side, “A little help.”