Sports Commentary June 27, 2005

B & G Imagination Junction


What Is Very Wrong About Sports Unions ………………



The National Basketball Association season at last ended on Thursday night as the San Antonio Spurs defeated the Detroit Pistons 81-74 in game seven to win the Finals series four games to three.

This was not a classic series but did go the limit for the first time, in the Final, since 1994. These are the two best teams, in the current NBA, but only in the fifth and sixth games did they put on truly virtuoso performances from start to finish.

It was a series of smothering defense and at times ugly offense—the first four games were blowouts. The last three contests were, at least, close on the scoreboard.

With the success of the Phoenix Suns one wonders if the NBA will return to the wide open run and gun style, of the pre 1990s, or will future Finals feature the bump and grind that tough defensive units such as the Spurs and Pistons feature?

Though both of these clubs can score the winner of all seven games played the harder nose defense that is what wins championships.

San Antonio has now matched Detroit’s three NBA championships and still the only former American Basketball Association team to win an NBA title.

This week was also a big week, for the NBA as a whole, as a lockout by the owners was averted by agreement being reached on a new six-year collective bargaining agreement—the current pact expires on Thursday.

Both the owners and players fared well in this pact. The owners won its main push to raise the player age limit minimum to nineteen years of age and shortened the length of player’s rookie contracts to a maximum of three years.
The player’s main victory was in raising the salary cap.

So, fortunately for fans, another ugly work stoppage was avoided. The National Hockey League’s lockout drones on after more than a year—the NBA is to be commended for getting this done and not risking killing its golden goose, as did hockey.On occasion this column has written about sports unions and how they can be so out of step with the real world.

Unions, in general, exist for good reasons—if managements treated and compensated its workers fairly then there would be no need for trade unions.

Yet, of course, unions do exist. Though sports unions, very rightfully, began for all the same reasons as other unions they have taken on a life very much different than its brothers in other industries.

The goal of most union members is to earn a fair livable wage, work under humane workplace conditions and be taken care of with a good pension plan after retirement.

In the major North American sports leagues the minimum wages are better than one million dollars a year, nearly all of the work places are modern facilities, they stay in five-star hotels (the United States Olympic men’s basketball team, all NBA players, lived on the Queen Mary while in Athens) and fly on charted aircraft and with some clubs private aircraft provided by the owner.
The blue-collar factory worker cannot relate.

The pension plans, of these leagues, are nearly as generous as what that factory worker makes still working nine to five. The new collective bargaining agreement has even sweetened that pot.

Yet, where the NBA Players Association might have gone wrong, once more, is in remembering its roots. There was no announced sweetening of the pension pot for NBA players that retired before 1965—their pension plan is an embarrassment next to those for those who played later.

George Mikan must be spinning in his freshly dug grave.

Mikan passed away, just days before his eighty-first birthday in Arizona, on June 1.

George Mikan was the NBA’s first true superstar and a groundbreaker as the first big man that combined his size with athletic ability during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.

After an All-America collegiate career, at De Paul University, Mikan went on to a stellar and dominating professional career with the league’s first great team, the Minneapolis Lakers.

In his long post-playing life Mikan was one of the sport’s true ambassadors. Though a fierce competitor Mikan was a gentle giant with that type of quiet charisma that seems in short supply among modern athletes.

Mikan had many jobs, after the NBA, including being the first commissioner of the ABA in the late 1960’s. Mikan never was a wealthy man but he did all right.
Yet, in his last few years, life became very difficult fighting illness—the medical bills mounted to where Mikan and his family were selling off his memorabilia to pay hospital and doctor’s costs.

It still was not enough as Mikan died unable to afford a proper funeral.

The modern Mikan is Shaquille O’Neal of the Miami Heat. O’Neal and Mikan met, on many occasions, with Mikan serving as a mentor. Being a current NBA star O’Neal has plenty of money—he stepped in and offered to pay the funereal and burial costs—reluctantly but gratefully, his proud family accepted the offer.

In his last years, Mikan quietly lobbied the NBA and the Players Association to make life easier for the now approximately seventy surviving players from before 1965.

These seventy are receiving two hundred dollars per month for each year that they played in the league. So, at his death Mikan, who played for eight and a half seasons, was receiving seventeen hundred dollars pension per month. Now that he is gone his widow, of fifty-eight years of marriage, will receive half of that amount.

In reporting the terms, of the new agreement, an increase in pension benefits, was included but I have not seen any mention as to whether the pre-1965 retirees are accounted for—I hope so.

The NBA is not alone, in this black mark, with any union anywhere that short changes any of its retirees open to feeling shame.

To forget a company’s roots is unforgivable. Many “old-timers” lament being born too early to swim in the pool of current luxury but being members of the same union entitles them to some decent fallout from the riches.

The key word is decent—I hope that all sports leagues look to their past and treat their surviving members with decency.

That is all that Mr. Mikan was asking—that is all that any old union worker asks.

Anything less underscores what is very wrong with sports unions.

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